Imates at Pretoria’s prison were detained under ”atrocious conditions”, according to a report by two advocates handed to the city’s High Court on Monday.
Judge Essop Patel earlier this year requested the Pretoria Bar Council to appoint advocates to investigate complaints by five prisoners, who approached the court for help, saying that they were incarcerated under inhuman conditions that violated their human rights.
In their report the advocates recommend a commission of enquiry into conditions at the prison, saying there would not be a quick and easy solution to the prisoner’s application.
Judge Ronnie Bosielo postponed the case to Tuesday and told the advocates to contact the necessary role players with the view to putting together a task team, which would have to report back to the court.
Bosielo said he had considered referring the matter, which he described as ”a time bomb”, to the Jali Commission into prison maladministration, but this would delay the case and remove it from the supervision of the court.
”This court will show that it has teeth and can bite. This court will be the watchdog,” he said.
The two advocates, who visited the prison, said they were ”astounded” that the five applicants and other inmates lived in vastly overcrowded cells and did not have access to running water. They said the cells did not have sufficient ablution facilities and the prisoners were forced to eat, live and sleep in the same limited space with insufficient ventilation.
”There are probably more cockroaches per square centimetre in the prison than sardines in a shoal running up the KwaZulu-Natal coast. The prison’s foundation is suffused with sewage water, the prisoners are detained in the cells without exercise for at least 22 out of every 24 hours, and the only means of relaxation in the cells is sleeping on a continuous basis,” they said.
They ”presumed” that the underlying reasons for the complaints included a high crime rate and a failure by the criminal courts to manage the finalisation of trials.
They also said there had been a lack of future planning by the prison authorities in expanding the number of prisons in South Africa.
Other possible reasons were poor budgetary control in the Department of Correctional Services and a disinterest or lack of prioritisation by the Department of Public Works of the problems facing the Department of Correctional Services.
They said an in-depth investigation could determine the root of the problem and suggest how to solve it.
The report comes in the wake of a public relations exercise when the media was given a limited tour of the jail after some of the men charged with treason in the Boregmag trial said they were kept under filthy and inhuman conditions.
Reporters were given a tour of the new section where the Boeremag accused were held in single cells, but were not shown other parts of the prison where up to 55 prisoners were kept in one tiny cell with only one shower, one toilet and one washbasin.
Prison authorities said they were trying their level best to improve conditions, but were hampered by serious overcrowding. – Sapa