Marianne Merten
Having a cellphone in jail can either lead to a ban from the tuck shop or another year behind bars as a Pollsmoor prison inmate has discovered.
When Allan Boesak, the recently paroled politician convicted of fraud, was found
with a stolen cellphone from which he had called his wife, he was banned from
the prison choir and sweets shop.
Last month the provincial Director of Public Prosecutions advocate Frank Khan
declined to press criminal prosecution due to insufficient evidence. The gangster who allegedly slipped Boesak the phone was found shot dead earlier this
year.
But for Derrick Brown the discovery of a cellphone on Christmas Eve 1999 had
more serious consequences. He was charged by a prison warder at a nearby police
station, prosecuted in court and sentenced last April to another 12 months in
jail.
Prison authorities suspended Brown’s visits for a month and postponed his next
parole hearing for a year. “I consider myself to be as much of a victim of the
previous violent apartheid system as Dr Boesak was, except with me I have lost
most of my life through it. I believe I have been done a great injustice …
People are getting very different treatment depending on who they are,” the 53-
year-old prisoner wrote in a letter.
Brown was initially sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in 1974, but remained
behind bars for 27 years.
“You were forced to become part of the prison gang just to be able to survive
and if the gang ordered you to do something you had to do it or else it would be your life. That is how I picked up an extra 30 years on my sentence.”
A Western Cape representative of correctional services said the law took its
course in Brown’s case after a social worker at Pollsmoor prison reported the
cellphone stolen.
However, the Mail & Guardian has established a charge of illegally possessing
stolen property was made by a warder. Statements in the case docket show that
the owner of the cellphone had lent it to a sister, the prison social worker.
Neither reported the cellphone stolen.
Brown remains upset at the treatment Boesak got and his portrayal as a model
prisoner when he was released after serving less than half his sentence. “I admitted my guilt to this [the illegal cellphone] and did not try to make up any
stories or lies. The reason my family gave it to me was because after 27 years
in prison I was due to be released soon. I had lost contact with much of my family and was trying to build ties with them again. Both payphones in our section had been broken for over four months.”