Zimondi plunders prisons
From The Zimbabwean – 20 January 2010
HARARE -Prisons commissioner Paradzayi Zimondi (Pictured) has transformed the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) into a quasi-military corps, running the correctional service as his personal fiefdom, disgruntled prison officers told The Zimbabwean this week..
They recounted how Zimondi had transmogrified the prison service from its duty to provide correctional services into a full military wing.
Sources revealed systematic plunder of the prison service by the commissioner, and how State resources had been diverted to bankroll Zimondi’s myriad personal enterprises.
Officers said food had been allegedly seized from prisons, leaving prisoners in despair.
After the March 2008 harmonised poll, prison officers recalled how Zimondi seized 100 cattle and 10 horses from Chikurubi Farm, and transferred all prison pigs to his farm. He is said to have brought famished cattle in to replace the heifers he allegedly looted.
Zimondi would seize milk and fresh produce from the farm prison and take it to his restaurant in Ruwa, called Plaka.
“He took building materials from the ZPS stores and built a dairy at his farm in Bromley,” said one officer. “Builders, electricians, carpenters were made to do the work. He built houses in Harare. I worked on some of the projects. We built a house in Milton Park, renovated one in Gunhill, and built a house for the (Justice and legal Affairs) permanent secretary, David Mangota in Donnybrooke using government materials stolen from the ZPS stores,” he said.
Other equipment was also said to have been taken to Zimondi’s two other farms in Shamva and Bindura. There are unconfirmed reports that he co-owns a banana plantation with police commissioner-general Augustine Chihuri.
It was further alleged Zimondi had properties in Kariba, where he is involved in a poaching ring slaughtering elephants for ivory. To over up the tracks, the meat is given to prisoners, but most of the time it is going bad. “He uses prison vehicles to transport the bodies of elephants,” said the officer. “Prison vehicles are not searched at roadblocks, making easy passage.”
Poaching
The poaching was said to be taking place in Gonarezhou and Hwange. The Zimbabwean heard that these activities had been going on since April 2009.
“He has also built a church in Murehwa using prison materials,” another source said.
Officers say that as far back as 1999, Zimondi established a military police branch at the ZPS. From 2001, he brought in soldiers from the Zimbabwe National Army to head all prison departments at the expense of experienced officers, who were forced into early retirement or moved from headquarters to work in prisons.
These military personnel include commissioners Ndlovu, Chihobvu – head of security; Kanonge – finance; Dube – construction, Maredza – projects and Ndebele – quartermaster.
Officers spoke exclusively to this newspaper about the purge of the prison service by Zimondi over the past decade, recounting in meticulous detail harassment and torture of officers suspected of being sympathetic to the MDC.
“From 2000, Zimondi controlled the ZPS cruelly. When Zanu (PF) lost to the MDC (in 2000), Zimondi formed the prisons military police to control and suppress MDC sympathisers in the ZPS. Torture of officers began. When Tendai Biti won the Harare East (constituency) in 2000, he held a celebration rally at Gletwyn Farm near Chikurubi. Officers who attended the rally were arrested and tortured. Some were discharged from their duties. The case was brought before the Rotten Row Magistrates Court. The perpetrators were found innocent and went back to work.”
The tortured officers were named as Shepherd Yuda, Andew Mabidi, Officer Njiri, Officer Bvunzawabaya and Officer Masarakufa, who has sine left the prison service and is now an MDC-T councillor in Mhondoro.
The situation worsened dramatically during the run-up to the sham June 27, 2008 run-off polls. At the heart of Zimondi’s terror campaign were asst commissioner Pambai, the officer-in-charge at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, the chief superintendent, the superintendent, principal prison officer (PPO), Gavhu, PPO Ndebele, prison officer Choto, prison officer Gonzo, prison officer Moffat, Makurudzo, PPO Malunga, prison officer Nyakahembe, PPO Ngulube.
A security department, allegedly manned by central intelligence organisation operatives Makurudzo, Mthombeni and Nyakahembe masquerading as prison officer, was formed. Efforts to obtain comment from Zimondi were futile at the time of going to print. The ZPS public relations requested written questions, which have been submitted.
Amnesty for petty offenders as thousands die in jail
From The Zimbabwean – 2nd September 2009
HARARE-With nowhere else to run and few people left to blame, President Robert Mugabe has conceded that the country’s prison system has collapsed while inmates continue to succumb to treatable diseases.
So serious is the situation that President Mugabe was forced to make an order that has been cited as the Clemency Order No 1 of 2009 through the government gazette Vol LXXXVII, No 60 of 21 August 2009 which serves to release inmates from custody in a variety of categories.
At least 1 544 inmates are expected to benefit from the President’s mercy.
The dire circumstances had led to trials failing to take place effectively trampling on the constitutional rights of suspects and prisoners.
Last month, the Justice Ministry committed itself to alleviating the plight of prisoners whose death toll had risen to over 1000 in the first four months of the year.
In light of the above and the in concurrence with the 100 day government plan, the Zimbabwe Prison Service through its acting public relations officer Elizabeth Banda said: “Due to inadequate financial resources coupled with the unfavorable economic environment, the ZPS has faced challenges in fulfilling its set objectives and statutory obligations which include provision of prisoners’ rations, clothing and bedding, toiletries and transport among others.
“As a short term relief option to try and contain some of these challenges seriously and negatively impacting on the effective and efficient administration of prisoners, a proposal to have a general amnesty granted to inmates was submitted to the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs.”
Categories which have been cited include; full remission of remainder of sentences for convicted female prisoners, save for those serving for specified offences, full remission of remainder of sentences for convicted juveniles, full remission of sentences for prisoners sentenced to 36 months and below who will have served a quarter of their sentences save for those serving specified offences, full remission of remaining period of imprisonment to all terminally ill prisoners upon certification by a prison medical officer of government medical officer of the fact that they are unlikely to survive their prison terms provided they are not serving for specified offences.”
Banda said a full remission of sentence has been granted to all inmates serving terms of imprisonment at open prisons provided they are not serving specified offences.
She added that all inmates sentenced to life in prison or to long terms of imprisonment on or before May 31 1989 and have served 20 years of more have also been granted full remission of the remaining period of imprisonment.
Prisoners excluded from amnesty include those on death row, habitual criminals serving a sentence of extended imprisonment, any person who escaped from custody and is still at large, person on bail pending appeal against conviction or sentence, persons serving sentences imposed by a court martial and persons serving sentences of imprisonment for a specified offence.
Specified offences include murder, rape or any sexual offence, carjacking, armed robbery, stock theft, tampering with apparatus for generating, transmitting, distributing or supplying electricity with results of electricity interruption or cutting off and damaging destroying or interfering with any apparatus for generating transmitting distributing or supplying electricity. Conspiracy and being an accessory to the offences above.
20 questions for Prisons Commissioner Paradzai Zimondi
The Interview that Never Was
Since our Prisons Commissioner will not make a statement, comment or answer any questions from the public or the press, here are just a few of the questions to which the Zimbabwean public would love to hear the answers:
20 questions for Prisons Commissioner Paradzai Zimondi
1) When did you first become aware that the situation in your prisons had become so bad, and what did you do about it?
2) Why did you not ask for assistance from Treasury, or contact the humanitarian aid organisations before now?
3) What happened to the educational, vocational and rehabilitation programs that were in place when you took office?
4) What has happened to the prison farms under your tenure, and why are they no longer supplying food to prisoners?
5) Have you considered resigning over this issue?
6) Do you think that ZPS officers responsible for the deaths of prison inmates should be punished?
7) To whom did you submit your annual reports?
8 ) Does your administration keep proper records of the cause of death and the burial place of each inmate?
9) Are you aware that your staff may be stealing food and other supplies from the quartermaster’s stores, for their own use or to sell on the informal market?
10) When was the last time you made a personal inspection of any of your prisons?
11) Have you ever deployed your senior prison officers to perform duties outside of the prisons, for example during Operation
Makavhoterapapi?
12) Do you know that disrupting court hearings, and disobeying High Court orders, is a punishable offense called ’Contempt of Court’?
13) At what point did the medical facilities at the prisons, collapse?
14) How many prison doctors and nurses are there on the ZPS payroll today?
15) Are you aware of the provisions of the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Offenders?
16) Are you aware that Zimbabwe is signatory to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)?
17) What measures did you take when there was an outbreak of cholera in the jails in December 2008?
18) For what services did you receive your medal (Grand Officer of the Zimbabwe Order of Merit) from President Mugabe on Armed Forces Day in August 2008?
19) Is it true that the commercial farms that you own make use of free prison labour?
20) Is it true that you supplied food and accommodation to the ‘Green Bombers’ i.e. ZanuPF youth militia in the Uzumba area, while they were engaged in torture, rape and murder of defenceless villagers before and after the 2008 elections?
Prison documentary exposes state excesses
From The Financial Gazette - Friday, 17 April 2009 15:12
FOLLOWING the broadcast recently of a documentary on SABC exposing inhuman conditions in Zimbabwe’s prisons, three warders allegedly responsible for smuggling cameras in were arrested. They are Thabiso Nyathi, Siyai Muchechedzi and Thembinkosi Nkomo.
They predictably will be punished, but not the prison officials responsible for such cruelty and barbarism that shocked television viewers.
The condition of the skeletal and visibly ill prisoners who featured in the expose titled “Hell Hole” shocked viewers in South Africa and beyond. Surely, this cannot happen in any country in the 21st Century.
The prisoners looked like inmates of Hitler’s concentration camps or Stalin’s gulags. How could a government in this day and age permit people under its care to be treated so sadistically?
The organisation, Zimbabwe Democracy Now, ran advertisements in some South African newspapers this week calling for the resignation of Zimbabwe Prison Services Commissioner Paradzai Zimondi and his two deputies.
In any civilised country, heads would roll. But Zimbabwe no longer meets the standard of a civilised country. As usual, it is those who had the temerity to blow the whistle that will be punished.
They embarrassed the government by exposing its true nature. For that the three warders will be made an example of while those responsible for the despicable conditions in Zimbabwe’s prisons will most probably be promoted.
One of the worst legacies of the ZANU-PF government’s reign will be the manner in which it extended the brutality of the regime to segments of society by enlisting young people to perpetrate all sorts of violent crimes.
Since the formation of the Border Gezi militias about seven years ago, between 10 and 15 000 young people have been turned into robotic torturers, rapists and murderers.
Crude propaganda and substance abuse have combined to turn these youths into callous merchants of violence.
They do so fortified by knowledge that a blanket immunity protects them. Monthly stipends from the state, which are still being disbursed despite the alleged dawn of a new political era, only serve as an added incentive to do anything ordered by those calling the shots.
A culture of violence and impunity has taken root in Zimbabwe especially in the past nine years. Its seeds were, however, sown soon after independence.
Right from the onset, the ZANU-PF government responded with violent brutality to any real or perceived political threat.
Gukurahundi in the 1980s must be seen within this context. In 2000, perpetrators of violence were expanded to include those not in the formal employ of the state.
At first war veterans were at the forefront to give legitimacy to land invasions and attendant violence. Soon afterwards, as the threat posed by the MDC refused to go away, the militia was formed to add numbers and youthful energy to the regime’s campaign of violence. It is important to point out that neither the war veterans nor youth militia could have been effective without the logistical, material and financial support given by the army, police and CIO. The brutalisation of the Zimbabwean society was well underway.
Any respectable country must be built on a foundation of decent values and morality. As the violence in Zimbabwe became increasingly institutionalised, it became acceptable to loot, maim, murder and drive people from their homes.
Through crude propaganda and self-interest, a belief took root that violence against enemies of ZANU-PF was legitimate and justifiable because the party liberated Zimbabwe and was the sole custodian of the interests of its people.
Violence against Ndebeles was justified in the name of defending the revolution. So was violence against white farmers seen as the continuation of the struggle for land.
Members of the MDC were fair game because they were stooges of the British and their kith and kin in Zimbabwe. The list of fair targets grew as the threat against the regime stubbornly persisted. It is a measure of how total the impunity is for those who act in the name of the regime that no one from Gukurahundi to the violence that still continues today, has been arrested and prosecuted.
There are those who will read this and say it is improper to bring this issue up at a time when an inclusive government is trying to heal and reconcile the nation. The answer is simple: If, as is the case, all the crimes committed in the past are swept under the carpet for the comfort and convenience of politicians, nothing will be achieved.
If there is no justice, acknowledgment and compensation for victims, Zimbabwe will not move forward in a meaningful and sustainable way. These past crimes will recur. Putting a plain bandage over a festering wound never heals it.
The brutal excesses of the ZANU-PF era must be officially acknowledged and all forms of redress effected for the poison of the past not to infect a new body politic.
The regime also knew that as long as victims of its terror were poor blacks in rural areas and townships, the world would not go beyond the symbolic gestures of disapproval. No action would be taken to imperil the very existence of the regime.
No one would be brought to justice. It is no coincidence that at the height of land invasions in 2000, of the thousands of white families on farms throughout the country, only nine were murdered.
Blacks were killed in their hundreds. Such an alarming rate among whites would have provoked serious consequences for the regime’s leaders. It is sickening hypocrisy on the part of those who claim to act in the name of black Africans.
All these crimes against people over an extended period take a huge toll on the character of a nation. The humanity of perpetrators is destroyed. They operate in a moral vacuum. Nothing is sacred anymore including the lives of people. No principle is beyond sacrifice.
A culture of lust for power and greed takes over. A deep sense of entitlement lies at the centre of their thoughts and deeds. The nation loses its moral compass.
Leaders become heartless and totally oblivious to the masses’ suffering and squalor. A sense of self-righteousness and invincibility makes it impossible for them to distinguish right from wrong. Fearful and cowed the populace largely submits to this savagery.
It is this environment that makes it possible for prisoners to be allowed to needlessly die of malnutrition, hunger and disease. It is such a system that allows prisoners to live in conditions of disgusting filth in which human excrement is all over the place.
Only people who have lost their humanity can let prisoners live with dead bodies in their cells until they begin to decompose and emit an unbearably foul smell.
If a system does not care about an old lady in the rural areas who has her son murdered and home torched for supporting the opposition, how can it give a toss for prisoners?
The three warders will pay a heavy price for their bravery, patriotism and humanity. They must have known the risk they were taking, but decided to do the right thing by exposing this outrage. For that, all decent people are thankful. Their efforts may well lead to far-reaching prison reforms in the not-too-distant future.
My sincere apologies to Roy Bennett
From The Zimbabwe Times – By Sibangani Sibanda, April 8, 2009
MORGAN Tsvangirayi, Tendai Biti and various other members of the former opposition movement in Zimbabwe, which is now part of the inclusive government, have spent time as enforced guests of the Zimbabwean prison system.
One must assume, therefore, that they have experienced first hand, the current conditions in our prisons. One assumes because, to the best of my knowledge, they have not disclosed, in public at least, the conditions under which they were incarcerated for various lengths of time.
When Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) treasurer and deputy Agriculture Minister designate, Roy Bennett, finally walked out of prison last month, he used an expression that has become something of a cliché. He said that he would not wish time in a Zimbabwean prison on his worst enemy.
I must admit that although I sympathized with the man, there was a part of me that thought that these were the sentiments of a white Zimbabwean failing to come to terms with the realities of prison system that thousands, including his own colleagues in the MDC, have endured in silence.
I owe Mr Bennett an apology.
This week, a South African Television channel ran a program on conditions in Zimbabwean prisons based, in part, on Bennett’s experiences. It was sobering and frightening, bringing into our homes, images that I would normally associate with black and white photographs of victims of the Holocaust and television pictures of the Ethiopian famine!
Even taking into account Zanu-PF’s grim record in government, this looked particularly horrific. Yes, they massacred people in Matebeleland in the name of flushing out dissidents. They have routinely abducted, tortured and killed opponents. They have allowed facilities that were once some of the best on the continent to deteriorate to a level where they are a danger to their supposed beneficiaries.
In short, they have been a callous, unfeeling, uncaring government. But to see live human beings living in the conditions that Zimbabwean saw in that documentary was beyond anything that I could have imagined in my county, in the 21st Century!
Now I seriously doubt Bennett will ever be sworn in as deputy minister.
It brought my opinion of Zanu-PF to a new low. Yet I was not completely surprised by this new revelation of the cruelty of a party that has always thrived on the total oppression of its people. What I found frightening was the fact that there had been so much silence on such serious violations of basic human rights at our very door step.
Prison officers who have presided over these death camps have remained silent, even when they have had to preserve the corpses of dead prisoners by covering them with sand onto which they pour water (as was described in the program); they have remained silent when there has not been enough food for the prisoners; doctors who have gone to prisons to attend to patients have said nothing. Even those close to prisoners have remained silent when their relatives have shown signs of emaciation or even told them (as they must have done) of the conditions they were living in.
Commissioner of Prisons, Paradzai Zimondi, has presided over this death and decay with such remarkable hard-heartedness that he thought nothing of dressing a few luck prisoners in bright yellow uniforms – all brand new – to go and sing “Happy 85th Birthday” to President Mugabe in Chinhoyi. At least they had more than a square meal on that day as compensation for the indignity. Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa had the audacity to suggest the emaciated figures appearing on TV screens last week were citizens of another African country.
Many almost believed them. The scenes depicted were just too terrible to be out of Zimbabwe.
And the politicians who have experienced the prison conditions for themselves have also remained silent. It is as if in Zimbabwe, nothing is too appalling. We accept whatever the government throws at us without question – as long as we are in situations that are less appalling.
Zanu-PF, if they were to be asked to account for the state of our prisons would probably blame “sanctions”, but I wonder if they will ever get asked now; now that they are part of a new “inclusive” government. In any case, what sanctions have been imposed on Zimbabwe that would account for such human suffering?
The MDC, who have the majority in Parliament but are the junior partner in the inclusive government have allowed themselves to become partly responsible for the state of our prisons – as they have allowed themselves to be identified with just about every failure of Zanu-PF. They, at least appear to still have some consciences. As they look at redressing all the other messes created by the old government, they should also look at the prisons.
Even those that society wishes to punish have some rights.
Zimondi must go
Saturday, 04 April 2009
BY JOHN MAKUMBE
The news that the Commissioner of the Zimbabwe Prison Services (ZPS), Paradzai Zimondi has made a U-Turn in his attitude towards Prime Minister, Morgan Tsvangirai is not funny. This is the man who publicly stated that as an avowed and staunch member of Zanu (PF) he would not salute Tsvangirai if he came into power. He further stated that should the MDC come into power he would resign his post and go and defend his farm, presumably from re-possession by the state and subsequent return to the rightful owners. It is trite to say what happened in June 2008 should be forgotten because it was done for political reasons.
Zimondi is of the sick idea that all the murders that were committed during the run-up to the run-off presidential elections should be swept aside because these were crimes committed for political ends. How sick can an official be?
Zimondi also told his subordinates to stop victimizing junior officers in the ZPS as this was no longer tolerable. It is therefore obvious that prior to the setting up of the inclusive government such practice was tolerable, if not encouraged by none other than the Commissioner himself. Junior officials were always suspected of being supporters of the MDC.
This same practice is also rampant in the police force and in the military service. It is this sick mentality that the Prime Minister (PM) will find most difficult to transform in the new Zimbabwe. My view is that people like Zimondi, Chihuri, Chiwenga and Shiri, should be written off as well beyond rehabilitation for effective service in the new Zimbabwe. They
should simply be pensioned off and dismissed form government service.
They are poison among our public servants. They need to be replaced by younger and more enlightened officers who have respect for the laws of this land. It is not enough for Zimondi to advise that the anti-Tsvangirai comments that he had made in the past should be disregarded. The man has to apologise to the PM as well as submit his resignation and go home.
What is even more depressing is the fact that, by and large, these fellows are grossly inefficient in the running of their entities. For example, just one look at the picture of prison inmates sleeping at Chikurubi (published in the Standard of 29.03.09) gives you the creeps. It is unbelievable that there are human beings in this country that are forced to live like that for years.
This is one of the outfits that crazy old Zimondi is responsible for. It is obvious that some of these inmates never wake up the following day, and it is not news at all, not to Zimondi. This is one area where well-thought out reforms could be implemented without the need for massive injections of foreign assistance.
We challenge the inclusive government to tackle this serious humanitarian situation as soon as possible in order to save lives. There is little to be expected from Zimondi, whose primary concern is his farm and blind loyalty to Zanu (PF).
It is unfortunate to have to express the sentiments that for some reason, the inclusive government seems to be dragging its feet when it comes to addressing issues of gross violations of human rights and the administration of justice. Admittedly, we are still cursed with a largely partisan judiciary and a rabidly unjust Attorney General. Transforming the
judiciary and the prison systems in this country is likely to be among the last activities that the Tsvangirai government is likely to tackle. They could perhaps begin by cleaning house from the top to the bottom. Make Zimondi and his ilk go home to their farms, please!
Report paints horrifying picture of conditions in prisons
Saturday, 24 January 2009 – BY JOHN MARIMO
HARARE – The government has established a cemetery at one of its biggest jails to bury hundreds of prisoners dying from disease and hunger, according to a confidential report shown to The Zimbabwean on Sunday. The report prepared by prison officials for Commissioner of Prisons Paradzai Zimondi paints a horrifying picture of conditions in Zimbabwe’s overcrowded jails, long neglected by a government hard pressed for cash and resources after nearly a decade of acute recession.
At one time, last month, prison officials had to contact a mass burial of decomposing bodies of prisoners that had been kept in a room at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison for six moths because a mortuary at Harare Central Prison was full, the report said in horrifying illustration of grim conditions in jails.
Last year saw the highest number of deaths of inmates ever recorded since Zimbabwe’s 1980 independence from Britain, said the report titled “End of year 2008 brief to the Commissioner of Prisons”.
The report was handed to Zimondi on Monday this week, according to our sources in the prison service.
Efforts to get comment on the report from either Zimondi or Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa were fruitless.
According to the report, 2008 was “the most horrific and traumatic year” for both inmates and prison wardens.
Prisoners went for days without a meal and were occasionally supplied with food “only meant to keep a person alive” such as the staple sadza (a thick porridge made from maize meal) and salted, unclean water, according to the eight-page report.
“The death impact of prisoners saw the opening of a cemetery at Chikurubi Prison Farm. The main causes of prisoners’ deaths included reduced meals, shortage of drugs and poor health environment in our prisons,” it said.
“Sir, we want to believe that 2008 had the highest number of prisoners’ deaths in the history of the ZPS (Zimbabwe Prisons Service). In Mashonaland Region alone in 2008 we witnessed a total number of 900 prisoners deaths,” according to the report.
A cholera epidemic that has killed close to 3 000 Zimbabweans since August has apparently also spread to jails, killing 234 prisoners between 23 December 2008 and 10 January 2009, according to the report.
“The most challenge we faced was living with dead bodies outside mortuaries,” the grim document said. “The situation was even very bad at Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison where bodies have been kept in a room since July 2008 up to 31 December 2008 mainly because the mortuary at Harare Central Prison could not accommodate them.”
With Mugabe’s government preoccupied with trying to find money to buy food, essential medicines, fuel, electricity and for salaries for hundreds of thousands of its workers, prisoners are a forgotten lot.
More often than not, inmates in many of the country’s jails have to survive on a single meal per day of sadza and cabbage boiled in salted water because there is no money to buy adequate supplies.
An outbreak of pellagra disease in 2007 killed at least 23 inmates at the notorious Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. Pellagra is a vitamin deficiency disease caused by shortage of vitamin B3 and protein.
Overcrowding has only helped worsen the situation with the country’s 55 jails said to be holding anything above 35 000 inmates at any given time which is more than double their designed carrying capacity of 17 000 inmates.
A parliamentary committee that toured Chikurubi and other prisons in 2006 was shocked to find inmates clad in torn, dirty uniforms and crammed into overcrowded cells with filthy; overflowing toilets that had not been flushed for weeks as water had been cut off due to unpaid bills.
The committee said in a report that the conditions in prisons were inhuman. However, nothing much has been done to date to improve conditions due to a lack of resources.
Human Rights violations at Chikurubi
14 Feb 09
Members of Zimbabwean Lawyers for Human Rights have now spent three days parked outside Harare’s Chikurubi’s maximum-security prison, trying to get three seriously ill detainees to hospital for examination and treatment.
Last week when the prison authorities finally obeyed a court order and sent them to hospital, Zimbabwe Prisons Service Commander General Paradzai Zimondi sent orders they be taken back to their cells instead of being admitted.
Yesterday the three most seriously ill, Fidelis Charamba, 72 with cardiac failure, Gandi Mudzingwa in his 50s, with “dangerously high” blood pressure, and human rights worker Jestina Mukoko, were taken to a Harare private hospital, where they were examined by a private doctor and one from the prisons department.
Both doctors said the three should be taken to hospital. But before they could be admitted, Zimondi again ordered them back to prison.
Zimbabwe: Prisoners go naked
By ZimOnline | 04.04.2006
Prisoners in some of Zimbabwe’s overcrowded jails have to stay naked because of a shortage of uniforms that highlights deteriorating conditions in prisons as the cash-strapped government struggles for resources to maintain the institutions, independent news provider ZimOnline has learnt.
Prison officials and some former inmates say the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) is unable to provide adequate uniforms for the ever-increasing number of inmates, resulting in prisoners having to share the available uniforms.
Inmates on remand and who will be attending court are the first priority to get uniforms, while those not going to court have to stay naked or use prison blankets to cover themselves, a senior official at Harare central prison said.
Prisoners in Zimbabwe are banned from wearing their own clothes and must wear prison-issued uniforms.
The prison official, who did not want to be named because he is not authorised to disclose such information to the press, said: “There is a serious shortage of uniforms for prisoners that they have to share.
“Priority for uniforms is being given to suspects in remand prison who would be attending court. Some of the prisoners have to stay naked, but it’s kind of rotational.”
A former prisoner at the notorious Chikurubi prison, just outside Harare, Elton Mandiro, said it is “most humiliating” when he and other inmates have to hang around the prison naked because there are no uniforms.
Mandiro, who was released from Chikurubi last month, said: “We were told to remove our uniforms and hand them over so that the guys going to court appearances could wear them. We would stay naked or sometimes we would wrap those torn prison blankets, but then again they are not enough.”
ZPS commissioner Paradzai Zimondi was not available for comment on the matter, while Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa, under whose portfolio prisons fall, said he was not aware of the uniforms shortage and promised to investigate the claims that inmates sometimes had to stay naked.
Chinamasa said the government has tried to ensure conditions in jails meet international standards, but admitted it has in some cases failed to do this because of lack of money.
He said: “That’s [prisoners staying naked] news to me. We try to provide dignified conditions for our prisoners according to international requirements. To a large extent we have managed, although in some cases funding affects us.”
The uniforms shortage is only one of several problems affecting the poorly funded state jails. There is also serious overcrowding with the more than 40 prisons holding more than 22 000 inmates, which is way above their designed carrying capacity of 16 000 prisoners.
Overcrowding plus a shortage of medical drugs in prison hospitals has seen the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis in prisons.
Food is also in short supply with numerous reports in the past of inmates, for example at Chikurubi prison, going for months without running water or spending weeks on a diet of dirty cabbage soup and maize-meal porridge.
A poor diet has resulted in a higher incidence of malnutrition-related illnesses among prisoners.
In a confidential report to President Robert Mugabe last February, Zimondi said conditions in the country’s prisons were so bad, with prisoners dying regularly, that every inmate was virtually on death row.
Most of those dying in prison or just after being released were dying of treatable diseases, the country’s chief jailer said in the report.
Describing the mortality rate in prisons as a “cause for concern”, Zimondi said at one of the country’s jails, which he did not name in the report, 127 prisoners had died over a period of 12 months.
The Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) in 2004 described conditions in prisons as hazardous and said the country’s jails were virtual death traps. The LSZ, the representative body for the legal profession in Zimbabwe, was speaking after touring prisons.
