The man sitting opposite me looks avuncular. With wispy greying hair and beard, Andre du Toit could easily play Father Christmas, but instead he is serving a 20-year sentence in a maximum-security prison for a double murder.
Du Toit (61) was imprisoned for shooting dead his wife and her lover.
”I was terrified. I’ve never ever been to a prison in my whole life, and in a matter of three, four seconds, my whole life changed,” says Du Toit, who has served eight years of his sentence, the last few at the maximum-security facility Kutama Sinthumule.
The prison, situated in the sweltering hinterland of Makhado close to the Zimbabwean border, is the world’s second-largest private prison, with 3 024 inmates.
Du Toit may not be the ”average” South African prisoner, but he has some points to make about the prison population.
”All of us are individuals,” he says. ”The people outside only see us as murderers, rapists, but these are people here.”
Du Toit is one of the South Africa’s 152 557 sentenced male offenders, in a prison reservoir rippling with a constant ebb and flow of inmates. On July 31 2005, there were a total of 155 662 inmates (both sentenced and unsentenced), of whom 3 105 were women. Of the total, 44 926 were awaiting trial.
In recent years, the South African government has deliberately moved away from the retributive penal approach to one embracing restorative justice.
For many citizens clamouring for an end to widespread crime, this approach amounts to coddling criminals. A common refrain, given wings by its repetition in the major media, is that prisons are ”hotels” providing free food and lodging at taxpayers’ expense. Many supporters of this approach favour a punitive regime in which prisoners lose all rights of citizenship.
But as Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour said at a November 2005 community imbizo (meeting) in Caledon, South Africa cannot disown the men, women and children behind prison walls.
”They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers,” said Balfour. ”They are our family members. Yes, they might have strayed and done wrong. They may have harmed our family members or our children. But they remain our family. We cannot disown them. We cannot turn our backs on them and make as if they do not exist.”
‘Prisons full of poor black men’
One thing is certain: the burgeoning prison population is largely a consequence of the inequalities bred within South African society.
”Prisons are full of poor, young black men. Unemployed, probably never employed and possibly unemployable, and if we don’t recognise the threat that poses to our democracy and start acting on it, I think we have a real problem coming,” says Chris Giffard, an independent prison analyst who once spent two years awaiting trial at Pollsmoor prison, charged with treason and terrorism for anti-apartheid activism.
Interviews with inmates suggest that the Department of Correctional Services has a long way to go before it establishes a rehabilitative atmosphere.
At the Newcastle correctional centre in KwaZulu-Natal, Thokozani Mkhwanazi (21) has served three months of a two-year sentence for shoplifting.
”It was so hard … but I had to adjust. Going to jail for the first time of my life, you don’t know what is wrong, what is right. It’s a new world totally different from what you are used to.”
Ezekiel Mekgwe (22) has served almost half a 10-year sentence for rape. He says that conditions at the Rooigrond correctional centre in Mafikeng are poor, and prisoners are given a paltry R9 a month.
”We can’t even buy toiletries. We work from 7am to 2.30pm, [and are] locked up at 3.30pm to 7am. There is no education [programmes]; they are just looking at the work. I don’t learn any skill. I just use my common sense,” he says.
”We don’t know if we are rehabilitating or what,” says Thabo Nelson Hlalele, imprisoned on a murder conviction at Kroonstad prison in the Free State. ”We feel trapped. But I did manage to educate myself. It’s all about where we come from and maybe to some prisoners, the mistakes we’ve made, and that we want to change our lives for the better of our communities.”
Black Africans make up the largest number of prisoners, with a smattering of whites and Indians. Coloured people are the second-largest number of inmates, with research suggesting that the imprisonment rate for coloured South Africans is four times higher than the national per capita imprisonment rate.
Women and children
In January 2005, about 2,2% of the total prison population was female. In common with the male population, there are women in prison because they are too poor to pay their bail or a fine as an alternative prison sentence. Most of the women are in prison for economic crimes, such as theft, fraud or forgery.
The imprisonment of children is a vexed issue under review by the government and Parliament, with the aim of giving effect to the principle that a child offender only be detained as a last resort, and then also for the shortest appropriate period.
In July 2005, there were 2 245 children under the age of 18 behind bars, and 1 244 of these were awaiting trial. A total of 123 infants and young children were with their mothers in detention. Sixty-one had been admitted with their mothers and 47 transferred to foster care.
”There appears to be a general unwillingness [by the Department of Correctional Services] to accept the fact that there are children that have to be detained in prison-like facilities, and there are none for their purposes.
”All other detention options are as bad or nonexistent,” said Appeal Court Judge KK Mthiyane during a December 2005 judgement in which the state appealed against a sentence of correctional supervision for a 14-year-old girl accused of murdering her grandmother.
According to the Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons, the Aids pandemic is a major factor in the number of prison deaths per year rocketing from 211 in 1996 to 1 689 in 2004. And while the courts have ordered that the department should provide anti-retroviral treatment, at state expense, the extent to which this is being followed is unclear.
Dennis Bloem, chairperson of Parliament’s portfolio committee of correctional services, acknowledges that much work remains to improve the prison system, but he hastens to point out that the Department of Correctional Services is not responsible for creating the backlog of tens of thousands of awaiting-trial prisoners.
”It is the responsibility of justice and the police. The past five years, I think that the justice cluster are working very well together, trying their level best to improve the way cases are being dealt with.
”But we still need to do more. My impression of prisons is that we are not doing justice to people, especially those who are being locked up for petty crimes.”
Around the world, prisons are a cross-section of society, in which every human trait, good and bad, is manifest. But given the scope of South Africa’s prison crisis, it will be no simple matter to create an environment in which the best of those traits are encouraged.
As 26-year-old Charne Brown, who served three years at North End prison in Port Elizabeth for dealing in cocaine, points out: ”Prison is a breeding ground for more crime.” — Sapa
This is the third 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