Zimbabwe's prisons are death-traps
08 April, 2009 08:11:00
Sokwanele
Zimbabwe's prisoners are suffering untold horrors in Zimbabwe's jails. The State is locking them up in hell-holes, condemning them to slow starvation and possible death from nutrition-related illnesses or the vast array of other diseases they are exposed to through unhygienic conditions.
Despite terrible desperation, their position as 'prisoners' means they are denied the most basic human instinct and that is to fight for survival: inmates can't beg for food from passers-by, they can't forage for wild berries in the bush, and they can't rummage through dustbins for waste food. Because of this, Zimbabwe's prisons constitute a unique and especially cruel form of torture that has both physical and psychological impacts on the people affected.
In October last year, the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO) released a report noting that there are 55 prisons in Zimbabwe (including satellites), with the capacity to hold 17 000 inmates. But in October 2008 it was estimated that more than 35 000 people were in jail.1 Extreme hunger, inhumane squalid conditions, exposure to a variety of diseases and stripping people of their dignity are standard practices in Zimbabwe's jails, resulting in shameful misery hidden away from the public gaze behind high walls and razor wire.
This article will show that conditions in the prisons have been steadily deteriorating for years. Those in charge of the prisons - Prisons Commissioner, Paradzai Zimondi, and Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice - are directly responsible for hundreds of lives lost as a direct result of inhumane neglect.
Two weeks ago we were told that rations at two Harare prisons had been cut to a quarter of what inmates should receive; a couple of days later there was no food left at all. Food has officially run out at Harare Central and Remand Prison and unless immediate help is provided, the inmates will starve. This is an inevitable conclusion and it is one which is set to repeat itself in all the prisons throughout our nation.
A prison officer working in one of the Harare prisons described their struggle for food throughout 2008; he said, "We've gone the whole year in which-for prisoners and prison officers-the food is hand to mouth... [Prisoners] will be lucky to get one meal. Sometimes they'll sleep without. We have moving skeletons, moving graves. They're dying."2
Prisons have struggled for food supplies for several years now. A policeman told reporters in 2006: "We give [prisoners] sadza and matemba (dried fish) boiled in water once every day in the afternoon, when resources are available".3 In June 2006, MP Claudius Makova told parliament that some inmates at Highlands police station were going for two days without food.4
In 2008, things were much worse: a confidential report written for Paradzayi Zimondi advised him that prisoners at Chikurubi Prison went for days without a meal and were occasionally supplied with food "only meant to keep a person alive" such as sadza and salted, unclean water.5
Roy Bennett was detained at Mutare Prison for four weeks after being unlawfully arrested in February, and he has spoken out about his experiences there. If it wasn't for the efforts of friends and supporters who brought him food while he was imprisoned, Bennett - like most inmates - would have been deprived of sustenance. In fact, Bennett specifically asked that his supporters kept the food simple so he could share with other inmates in his cell who were starving to death. 6
