The Mail & Guardian is reliably informed that at least three times a week hundreds of prisoners are bused to commercial farms owned by politicians and the army’s top brass in Mashonaland East and Central, Bulawayo and Harare provinces.
”We received information during our tour of prisons that politicians were using them [prisoners] as labour,” says Willias Madzimure, opposition Movement for Democratic Change legislator, who toured seven prisons last year as a member of the parliamentary portfolio committee on justice, legal and parliamentary affairs.
Madzimure says prisoners told him they were working on politicians’ farms for nothing. The arrangement between prison services and senior politicians is not yet clear, but it appears that prisoners who work on the farms are compensated only with food. Yet, they are still better off than the average prisoner.
”At least they have had something to eat, but those inside the prisons can go for about three days without eating anything,” Madzimure said.
In Bulawayo, former home affairs minister and ruling Zanu-PF Politburo member Dumiso Dabengwa has been using prisoners from Khami Prison for labour on his farm for the past year. The legislators also received information during the tour that another Politburo member, Senator Dzikamai Mavhaire, was using prisoners at his farm in Masvingo, about 350km south of Harare.
”When the judge sentences you to jail with labour, it means providing labour for state services,” says Dr Lovemore Madhuku, law lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and constitutional law expert. ”Any other labour is illegal and borders on exploitation. It’s forced labour, pure and simple, even if the prisons service is being paid. The prisoners are simply working against their will.”
Meanwhile, those who remain inside jail walls are now relying on ”relatives to supplement the little food they get”, said Madzimure. Prisoners ”with no relatives visiting are severely compromised. They have no food or anyone to turn to.”
According to his lawyer, jailed suspected British mercenary Simon Mann is provided food three times a week at Chikurubi Maximum Support Prison. ”I feel sorry for those without relatives. The situation inside Chikurubi is pathetic. Deaths and severe cases of malnutrition are common. If you are HIV-positive and you go for days without food, it creates havoc in your system,” says prominent lawyer Jonathan Samkange.
Prisons are congested, with a population of more than 40 000 crammed into a system capable of handling only 15 000.
With a budget severely whittled down by inflation, prison authorities are battling to get increasingly scarce commodities such as maize meal, cooking oil and meat, and the attorney general’s office is granting easy bail to accused in lesser crimes.
”We just can’t send people to die of hunger,” said an officer within the attorney general’s office. ”The last time a prisoner had tea or porridge at Chikurubi was last year August.”
According to the Prisoner Support Service, a human rights group, ”the men are crowded — 25 men per cell — in a cell measuring 9m by 4m. They are confined to their squalid quarters between 3.30pm and 7am, and because there are no beds, they have to sleep on a mat on the cell floor. Some prisoners are in the terminal stages of Aids, tuberculosis, herpes and other highly infectious diseases. Others are mentally ill. Many infected prisoners are unable to control their bodily functions, and this results in the cell floor and blankets being contaminated with body fluids, pus, phlegm, blood, urine, faeces.”
The group sees this as a violation of the Zimbabwean Constitution, as it constitutes ”degrading punishment … and violates human dignity”.