WHAT IS AN OPEN OPPORTUNITY PRISON?
Introduction
Often when talking about policy and abstract ideas it is easy to overlook the intense emotion felt by people who suffer in poor circumstances or difficult conditions.
In all areas of life in South Africa there is hardship and suffering and central to any policy designed to make life better is an understanding of and empathy for other people’s experiences.
The DA’s spokesperson on correctional services, James Selfe MP, recently related such an experience to the party’s national caucus, in an attempt to show what life in a government prison was actually like.
His presentation – a first hand account of his experience – follows below. It makes for emotive reading and certainly captures much of the condition in which these particular prisoners and their warders spend most of their day.
At the end of his story, James sets out the DA’s alternative – its vision for South Africa’s prison system.
Middledrift Prison
Last August, I visited Middeldrift Prison near King Williamstown in the Eastern Cape. Middeldrift had been built by the Ciskei Government as its major maximum security facility: many people were hanged there during that time. It’s old, decrepit and depressing.
I visited one of the sections. This consists of a courtyard, onto which six communal cells face. Each of these cells is roughly the size of Tony (Leon)’s old office, and was designed to accommodate 18 inmates. I went into one of the cells. It housed 57 people, in triple bunks or sleeping on the floor. There was one open shower, one open toilet and one cracked basin (used for both ablutions and laundry).
I wish I could adequately describe the stench in the cell which was overpowering and nauseating: a combination of dirty laundry, body odour and excrement. Despite the fact that it was mid-winter, the heat in the cell from 57 bodies was noticeably unpleasant; who knows what it’s like in summer.
Because of shortages of staff, the inmates are generally locked in these cells between 3pm and 7am the next morning, and longer over the weekends. During lock-up periods there is minimal or no supervision, which means that the cells are run by the gangs.
So, imagine if your son was arrested and imprisoned. He would arrive in one of these cells where he would be faced by a very simple choice: join a gang, or be beaten up, sodomised and robbed of all his possessions. As a “frans” (someone not belonging to a gang) he would sleep on the floor with the cockroaches, unless he could bribe an official or one of the gang leaders for better treatment or protection.
That is one side of the story, now imagine that you’re an official. The staff: inmate ratio is one of the highest in the world at 1 to 35 (in Australia it is 1: 1.1). In reality, the South African figure includes management and administrative staff, so one official can be in charge of an entire section of 240 or more inmates, many of whom are violent sociopaths. Every minute that you’re on duty you run the risk of being assaulted or knifed. Many officials are threaten by inmates to smuggle goods into prison or their families will be killed by a connected gangster on the outside. Corruption is a huge problem that fatally undermines the prison system, but please understand the stress the officials live with.
Before this year’s budget vote, two officials came to see me. One had worked for Correctional Services for 34 years; he had two sons at Stellenbosch, and he took home slightly less than R5 000 per month. Because of affirmative action, many white and coloured warders have been in the same rank for 10 years or more. Moreover, up until recently, promotion was given only to those with POPCRU credentials, so many managers are in fact shop stewards and very politically compliant. Thus Mr Sipho Manqele, the Area Commissioner at Malmesbury knew exactly what to do when Tony Yengeni arrived there.
Correctional Services display class
| Posted on 22/6/2007
 |  | |