Thirteen alleged Boeremag members won the right on Thursday not to have to listen to centralised radio broadcasts in prison — provided they buy portable radios for fellow inmates who would otherwise be left in silence.
Pretoria High Court judge Eberhard Bertelsmann granted an urgent application to this effect, and criticised prison authorities for leaving the men with no choice but to bring the matter to court.
”I am of the view the solution is one the authorities should have found themselves,” he said before ordering the minister and commissioner of correctional services and the head of C-Max prison to pay the costs of the application.
The 13 claimed they were being psychologically tortured by loud broadcasts of Metro FM and Jacaranda 94.2 from 6am to 9pm each day.
One, Kobus Pretorius, had contemplated suicide.
Piet Pistorius, for the men, said this ”bombardment” was preventing his clients from preparing for their ongoing trial with nine others on 42 charges related to an alleged attempt to overthrow the government.
The men were being held in section A5 of Pretoria’s C-Max prison with nine other inmates.
They claimed the broadcasts were continuing over communal speakers despite repeated appeals to the authorities.
This, they said, was malicious since all but one of the section’s occupants had their own radios anyway. Prison authorities said there were four.
”Surely in a country where one is presumed innocent until guilty an awaiting-trial prisoner has the right to listen to what he wants to, when and how loud he wants to,” Pistorius argued.
The court heard that authorities were busy upgrading the C-Max audio system at a cost of nearly R1-million so that each cell would have its own speaker that could be deactivated at the inmate’s wish. They would, however, still not have a choice of radio station.
Graham Bester, for the respondents, argued it would not really help to discontinue the centralised broadcasts in section A5, as inmates would still be able to hear the speakers in adjoining sections.
He said the department would not be willing to buy radios for those inmates affected by the application, as this would trigger demands for radios from all inmates countrywide.
Bester said authorities had turned down the volume following complaints, and the decibel level was now comparable to that of an ordinary conversation.
Bertelsmann questioned the motives of the prisons department.
”Why was a federal issue made of something that could have been resolved with a little bit of goodwill?” he asked.
The judge pointed out that the men were presumed innocent in the eyes of the law and that incarceration, especially solitary confinement, was always a serious containment of individual rights.
It was, therefore, essential that awaiting-trial prisoners should suffer as little invasion of their rights as possible.
He ordered that the centralised broadcasts in section A5 be stopped as soon as the applicants provided radios to those who had none.
The judge added that the applicants should have no cause for complaint if one or two sports events a week were broadcast over the old system.
The trial of the 22 men continues next Tuesday. — Sapa