Prison gangs are using HIV infection by rape as punishment in a grim ritual known as ”slow puncture”, the Jali Commission heard on Wednesday.
Director of the office of the judicial inspectorate of prisons Gideon Morris said gang tribunals would sentence errant gang members, or prisoners who refused to join them, to be raped by HIV-positive inmates.
Sometimes the rape would be carried out by one person, sometimes by several.
”They give him a ‘slow puncture’, meaning he will die over a period of time,” Morris told the commission.
He had first heard of the punishment about six months ago, in the Western Cape and on the East Rand.
”It’s a new phenomenon,” he said.
If that inmate did then die in prison of Aids-related conditions, it would be recorded as a natural death. He also said the number of prisoners who died of natural causes rose 528% from 186 in 1995 to 1 169 last year, an increase considerably higher than the 38% increase in prison population.
”The poor hygienic conditions caused by overcrowding are placing high demands on the immune systems of prisoners, which seem to contribute to this escalation in the number of natural deaths,” he said.
”Even the most healthy person would find it difficult to remain healthy if he or she was locked up in some of these prisons.”
Added to this was the increased number of HIV/Aids prisoners admitted from outside the prison, he said.
But replying to a question from the commission’s leader of evidence, Vas Soni, he said it was difficult to say whether Aids was the largest cause of death.
The commission also heard that prisoners in SA’s most overcrowded jail are forced to sleep in shifts because there is not enough room for all of them to lie down.
Morris said the prison Bizana in the Transkei was 470% overcrowded.
Built for 54 people, it currently holds 254 prisoners, while the new C-Max prison at Kokstad, barely 100km away, has only six percent of the 1 440 prisoners it is designed for.
His office had asked the Eastern Cape commissioner of correctional services to move some of the Bizana prisoners to Kokstad to relieve the overcrowding.
Morris said the United Nations norm was 3,5 square metres of cell space per prisoner.
However, overcrowding in South Africa’s jails meant that 57 500 prisoners had only 1,2 metres of space each. And in this space, they spent at least 23 hours a day.
The inspectorate had even heard of cases where prisoners did not want to take their one hour of daily exercise, for fear they would loose their bed space and have to sleep next to the cell toilet.
Morris said the authorities urgently needed to find ways of keeping more awaiting-trial prisoners out of jail. Most of them were not accused of violent or sexual crimes, he said. – Sapa