Zimbawe Prisons – A former magistrate’s perspective
From ZimDaily – by Kenneth Kudakwashe Nyoka, 8th April 2009
ZIMBABWE — HARARE —The unfolding humanitarian disaster in Zimbabwean prisons has driven me out of my little delusionary world and hit me right between the eyes.
Roy Bennett the much maligned and incarcerated MDC official attempted to highlight to the world upon his release from Mutare remand prison the inhuman and degrading conditions behind Zimbabwean prison walls but it appears everyone else is too busy with their own business and are oblivious to the plight of these wretched and dehumanised souls that are Zimbabwe’s prisoners.
Whilst it should be a given that if “you do the crime you should do the time“, it is the statutory duty of those who place these men behind those prison walls to ensure that they are well fed and nourished.
If they cannot feed them then they should explore other alternative forms of punishment to custodial sentences.
It is scandalous in the extreme that human beings should be subjected to these Dickensian and medieval conditions in prison in this the 21st century.
The magnitude of the plight of prisoners has not been accorded the attention it deserves.
The grotesque and antiquated judiciary system continues to churn out custodial punishment when it is manifestly clear that the equally antiquated and rotten prison infrastructure is completely unable to provide for these inmates.
The prison infrastructure was designed and constructed during the colonial era and there has been no expansion whatsoever in these structures as a consequence of which some of them are carrying tenfold their capacity.
The acute decline in living standards in the country due to the ruinous policies of the Zanupf Government have been replicated and magnified in the country’s prisons.
Inmates periodically starve to death and those that are living manifest severe symptoms of inter alia malnutrition and some other untreated conditions whilst others are clearly in the last stages of their lives.
This article is a clarion call to the authorities that are now in charge of running these institutions of mass suffering to act urgently to alleviate this humanitarian disaster.
There are those who will argue that we should not be overly concerned with the welfare of prisoners when we cannot even feed the ordinary law abiding citizens in the first place.
The state has through its courts taken away the liberties of these individuals and saw it fit to confine them. It has thus become vicariously liable for the sustenance of these individuals. If it cannot feed and clothe them then it should not put them there in the first place.
Recent developments and research in criminology point to the fact that imprisonment is not always the best and productive form of dealing with offenders.
Incacerating offenders often lead to a scenario where they mix with hardened criminals and chances of recidivism are compounded by imprisonment.
In the case of Zimbabwe sodomy has been well documented in the prison system and first time prisoners are at risk of being infected with the deadly HIV virus from those who routinely engage in sodomising young and vulnerable inmates.
Because of the overcrowded nature of the prisons contagious diseases like tuberculosis and other skin ailments are also rife. Sanitary conditions are woefully absent and deplorable. Toilets which do not flash are constantly overflowing with human waste.
It is an understatement to describe the conditions as hellish. It was recently reported that one prison had completely run out of the scant rations of food it had this week.
The fact is that conditions in Zimbabwean prisons have been under-reported and the longer we keep quite in the face such depravity makes us complicit in this whole inhuman transaction. We have allowed the commission of mass murder on our watch.
The puerile stench that emanates from these death holes poisons the blast of fresh air which the new political dispensation is attempting to engender.
We should not rest easily in our mansions and drive comfortably in our new government issued limousines when such a transgression is obtaining right in our faces.
Kenneth Kudakwashe Nyoka is a former magistrate and prosecutor in Zimbabwe.
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
US Department of State – Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor 2006
March 6, 2007
Prison and Detention Center Conditions
Prison conditions remained harsh and life threatening. The government’s 47 prisons were designed for a capacity of 16,000 prisoners but held approximately 25,000 according to media reports. In December 2004 the Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) conducted a prison inspection at Khami Maximum Prison in Bulawayo. The inspection revealed that the prison, built to accommodate 650 prisoners, had 1,167 inmates. Poor sanitary conditions persisted, which aggravated outbreaks of cholera, diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, and HIV/AIDS related illnesses. Human rights activists familiar with prison conditions reported constant shortages of food, water, electricity, clothing, and soap.
Harsh prison conditions and a high incidence of HIV/AIDS were widely acknowledged to have contributed to a large number of deaths in prison. The Institute of Correctional and Securities Studies, a local NGO, estimated that 52 percent of the country’s prisoners were HIV positive. One doctor who worked with former prisoners in the Harare area estimated that the prevalence figure was closer to 60 percent. In February Zimbabwe Prisons Service Commissioner General Paradzai Zimondi described the mortality rate in prisons as a “cause for concern.”
The LSZ also reported that 127 prisoners in Khami prison died in 2004; the deaths were attributed to overcrowding and unsanitary conditions resulting in the spread of diseases, including tuberculosis.
In August the Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) reported that torture in prisons was common. IWPR quoted Roy Bennett, a former MDC parliamentary deputy jailed for eight months in Chikurubi prison beginning in 2005, as saying he saw other prisoners “crippled” from beating on the soles of their feet. Bennett added that “if you are too slow in sitting down or squatting – because you can’t talk to the guards standing up, you have to grovel on the floor to talk to them – you are beaten.”
The government did not make any efforts to improve prison conditions during the year.
Juveniles were not held separately from adults. The Prison Fellowship of Zimbabwe, a local Christian organization working with former inmates, estimated that more than 200 children were living in the country’s prison system with their detained mothers. Pretrial detainees generally were held in group cells until their bail hearings. Once charged, if detainees were refused bail, they were held in a separate remand prison.
The law provides that international human rights monitors have the right to visit prisons, but government procedures and requirements made it very difficult to do so. Permission was required from the commissioner of prisons and the minister of justice, which sometimes was not granted or took a month or longer to obtain. The government granted local NGOs access on a number of occasions during the year.
Prolonged pretrial detention remained a problem, and some detainees were incarcerated as long as nine years before trial or sentencing because of a critical shortage of magistrates and court interpreters. One prominent NGO estimated that in 2005 the courts would require at least two years to address the backlog of cases.
