The fire that claimed the lives of three Pollsmoor inmates is only part of a cycle of violence that prison staff fear has yet to reach its bloody climax.
That climax, they say, may be the stabbing of one of their own colleagues.
There have been three fires in the prison’s cavernous admissions centre over the past three days, the first on Sunday and the others — including the fatal one — on Monday afternoon.
They all occurred in the D2 unit, where inmates recognised as being gang members are housed in a bid to segregate them from other awaiting-trial prisoners.
The nine inmates involved in the cell-burnings are or were members of the 28s, one of several prison gangs that operate in Pollsmoor.
Prison staff say the nine were put in the single cells after a fellow prisoner, accused of informing on the drug trade in the prison, was stabbed — not fatally — at a church service on Sunday morning.
The nine apparently started the fires in protest against the move, in a bid to be moved back to communal cells with their fellow gang-members.
Three of them were hospitalised with relatively minor injuries after Sunday’s fire.
The second and third fires began shortly before 4pm on Monday, as the prisoners were about to be locked up for the night.
In cell 227 three inmates aged 23, 28 and 32 — their names have not yet been released — piled their foam mattresses, blankets and clothing against the cell door and set the heap alight.
The flames caught rapidly, the foam mattresses pouring out acrid black smoke.
When Danie Scholtz, the acting head of the admissions centre arrived, the bars of the door grille were so hot he had to grab a blanket from a neighbouring cell to protect his hand as he forced it open.
The heat blackened the whole of the two-by-three-metre cell, blistering paint on the walls, melting a plastic bucket on top of a cupboard and shattering glass in the windows.
It burst the porcelain toilet bowl in the cell, leaving only a jagged stump, and baked the ceiling of the corridor outside so that its plaster collapsed. By the time Scholtz and his colleagues got to them, the men were unconscious and severely burned.
”When I entered they were like dead people. There was no response,” Scholtz said.
One had been wearing nylon trousers, which were melted into his skin.
”As we transferred them to the ambulance, as soon as you got hold of somebody and tried to put them in a blanket, the skin just fell apart,” he said.
Meanwhile, around the corner, prisoners had set a second cell alight, but because staff were already on the scene, they were rescued with relatively minor burns to hands, arms and faces.
It took nine fire extinguishers to douse the flames in the two tiny cells.
All six men were rushed to Victoria hospital in Wynberg. The three from cell 227 died on Tuesday morning; the others are reportedly in a satisfactory condition.
Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour, who inspected the burned cells on Tuesday afternoon, offered his ”profound sympathies” to the families of the dead men.
He said he had ordered a thorough investigation by his department, and that the matter had also been reported to the police.
”I have also instructed that proactive steps be determined to minimise the risks of such incidents happening within our facilities,” he said.
Some of the Correctional Services staff involved in the rescue were severely traumatised by the experience, and were to undergo debriefing and counselling on Tuesday afternoon. But worse may await them when they return to duty.
Staff at the prison said on Tuesday that the code of the 28s dictated that when a gang member died in a way that could be blamed even indirectly on a staff member, the death had to be avenged by ”picking up the blood”.
The target of the revenge killing for the cell deaths, he said, would be a Correctional Services staffer — any staffer.
”That life needs to be ‘recovered’, and the more senior the warder the better,” said another correctional services employee.
”That is why we fear for the lives of our staff.” – Sapa