An accused man is arrested. At the court’s holding cells he is savagely raped. His assailants shove a ”bullet” filled with contraband dagga up his rectum, to be couriered into prison. His ordeal has only begun.
This is the testimony of ”Frank Erasmus”, contained in a letter read out to members of Parliament in October 2004.
Once inside the concrete warrens of South African prisons, sexual assault is but one of myriad threats facing inmates as they struggle to maintain a modicum of personal hygiene and health, hanging on to wisps of self-respect in a violent and unpredictable environment.
”We have one [pair of] pants and wait months for a new shirt. Medical care is lacking and we wait three months to see the doctor. We only have breakfast and lunch, eating things like kerrie-eiers [curried eggs].
”We finish eating in the communal cell and then see how someone shits in the toilet. It’s not right. All can’t go to school. How can 400 bandiete [prisoners] go to school in one small classroom?” asks Morne Bull, who is three years into a 20-year murder sentence at Brandvlei maximum prison in the Western Cape.
Harrowing reality
While conditions vary considerably among the country’s 240 functioning prisons, it is fair to say that they are, by and large, harrowing places to be, and there is little reflection of South Africa’s constitutionally guaranteed human rights regime.
A legal test of these conditions is likely to be presented next year, when the Cape High Court will be asked to rule on the constitutionality of incarceration that does not meet basic human rights. The application for a detailed supervisory order has been brought by a prisoner — who the court has ruled may be identified only as WJ — and the Prison Care and Support Network, which operates under the auspices of the Catholic Church.
The Law Society of South Africa, in its prison-visits report of 2003, notes some human rights abuses, including sexual harassment of female inmates and autocratic behaviour by warders.
”In certain male sections of the prisons, warders meted out inhuman punishment to prisoners such as standing upside down on one’s palms — and if they fail to satisfactorily complete the degrading manoeuvres, the prisoners are beaten using batons,” says the report.
The prison system is characterised by overcrowding, understaffing and an entrenched gang culture.
Typical prison gangs — identified by the numbers 26s, 27s and 28s — exist throughout the penal system.
In Pollsmoor’s juvenile prison, Medium A, the heavily tattooed bodies of youngsters are incongruous with the peach fuzz on their faces, and darting eyes that speak of innocence lost.
The overcrowding is palpable: Medium A, built in 1964, was not originally designed to serve as a youth prison. Metal double-bunks line the perimeter of the communal cells, with another row down the centre. Broken windows act as air conditioners.
Three showers and two filthy toilets, one spraying the user with water every time it is flushed, are the only ablution facilities for an average of 40 inmates.
”Kids are growing and more active: you can’t expect then to have the same amount of food as adults (for example, one spoon of meat and one spoon of maize). They get restless and fight all the time because of food,” says Desmond Lingeveldt, an independent prison visitor attached to the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, a statutory body.
”The most powerful inmates here are those that work with the food, who we call the gang [corridor] boys,” says another independent prison visitor, Troy Titus, who observes that franse — newcomers who are not members of the gangs — are typically not given any meat.
In this environment, survival — not rehabilitation — is the order of the day. Establishing the preconditions necessary to rehabilitate inmates and help them to rejoin society is likely to prove a Sisyphean undertaking for the Department of Correctional Services.
State of disrepair
Two years ago, the department noted that the maintenance backlog for prisons had grown to R2,8-billion. The government is upgrading 18 facilities to meet minimum standards, with another 44 prisons expecting renovations — mostly a fresh coat of paint and repairs to the visible signs of dilapidation.
The state also plans to build eight ”new generation” prisons. When the first four of these new jails are finished in the 2006/07 financial year, they will add 12 000 spaces to prison capacity.
Overcrowding remains the biggest immediate hurdle for the department. And while some success has been achieved in alleviating overcrowding, the number of incoming prisoners continues without respite. In 2007/08, the prison population is projected to top 200 000 inmates.
At the end of July 2005, the total capacity of South Africa’s prisons stood at 114 495 prisoners, while the actual number of inmates was 155 662. Nqamakwe correctional facility in the Eastern Cape took dubious honours as the most overcrowded prison: designed for eight, it held 60 prisoners.
Observers say that at overcrowded facilities it is virtually impossible to run any meaningful rehabilitation programmes.
”There is simply no space. Where do you give people a class, or run a programme, if there is no space for them to even sleep?” asks Gideon Morris, national director at the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons.
”Conditions make people more frustrated and devastated. I have to wake up at 3am if I want to shower with warm water. A major problem is hygiene. How can you cure TB [tuberculosis] when they spread the virus in overcrowded cells?” asks Mzwandile Magadla, who has been held at Pollsmoor for nine years, after being sentenced to 15 years for armed robbery.
Within the Department of Correctional Services, high staff turnover and poor staff retention is worsening the situation, with a total staff shortfall of more than 13 000 reported in the 2003/04 annual report. Meanwhile, the department spends about R8-million a year on a recruitment company.
Low staff morale and overcrowding contribute to the use of force by warders.
”It is the culture of a member. If they can’t manage these 60 laaities [kids] in the cell, they just donner [hit] them, trying to force down authority with fear,” says Titus.
One warder at the juvenile prison faces 18 internal charges against him, including one of breaking a juvenile’s arm with a baton.
Often, understaffed prisons deny prisoners their mandatory exercise hour, meaning that prisoners sit caged for up to 23 hours a day.
Conditions in South Africa’s two private maximum-security prisons — Mangaung in Bloemfontein and Kutama-Sinthumele in Makhado — are a far cry from those in state prisons. However, the private prisons do not face overcrowding, and total expenditure — in the form of transfers from the Department of Correctional Services — to the two private companies for the 2004/05 financial year amounted to slightly more than R510-million — nearly one-third of the entire facilities budget allocation of R1,6-billion.
Few, however, believe private prisons are a long-term solution to South Africa’s prison crisis.
”You can’t have two types of prisons in the country. On what grounds do you qualify to go to a private prison where the physical conditions are far better than other prisons? You can’t have that,” says Vincent Saldanha, chairperson of the human rights committee at the Law Society of South Africa. — Sapa
This is the second in a series, made possible by a two-month media fellowship granted to South African Press Association (Sapa) reporter Wendell Roelf by the Open Society Foundation of South Africa in cooperation with Sapa