HELL HOLE
PRODUCER: JOHANN ABRAHAMS AND GODKNOWS NARE
DATE: 31 MARCH 2009
INTRO:
In tonight’s story we focus on the horrific conditions inside Zimbabwe’s prisons where hundreds are dying from malnutrition and disease.
We bring you exclusive video images filmed with hidden cameras, over a three month period of prisoners trapped inside a system where they are literally starved to death.
Government admits that it is facing a crisis and has appealed for aid…but is it going to arrive in time…?
This special report by Johann Abrahams and Godknows Nare…
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER
It is early evening when we finally reach Musina after a six hour drive from Johannesburg. Musina is on the doorstep of South Africa’s northern border with Zimbabwe. I am with my colleague Godknows Nare, and we are here to meet a government official who has been working with us, over the past few months, to expose the terrible conditions inside the Zimbabwean prisons. The man we are meeting cannot be identified and we call him Sydney.
He is just one of several officials and former prisoners who assisted us in getting the visual evidence of the dire situation inside the prisons. Afterwards in the privacy of our hotel we interviewed him after watching shocking visuals of dying prisoners.
UPS: SYDNEY - It is very very horrific situation. I mean it is bad. Believe me. People are dying in there. Because of diseases and overcrowding, make diseases spread even more faster.
Title: hell hole
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - Prisoner 158/08, Brian Gumbo wakes up to another bleak day inside Beitbridge prison on the Zimbabwean side. He is only 26 years old and suffers from TB and severe malnutrition. He is half way through his two year sentence for housebreaking…and it seems unlikely that he will make if out of here unless he gets help.
UPS: SYDNEY - He shares his cell with a few other cellmates. They are all sick and it is likely that they were infecting each other. This is their daily routine, they live like this every day. Eat the very same diet. No medication. This is a courtyard. They go out to enjoy the sunshine but you can see they are sick. We tried to track down his family. He is originally from Mberengwa in the South of Zimbabwe but he last lived in this house in Dulibadzimu township in Beitbridge. This woman says Brian’s sister who lived here with him has left some time last year.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - Beitbridge prison has the capacity to house 500 inmates. Unlike in other prisons overcrowding is not a problem here because many have died. At this meeting they are given a chance to raise grievances. This man is concerned about his fellow inmate called Brighton.
UPS: INMATE - talking about Brighton . Brighton is very sick, He is lost control of all his bodily functions. He just soils himself. Even when he is wide awake.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - Brighton Mudadi is married and only 28 years old. He is serving a 18month sentence for common robbery and is diagnosed with TB. It seems as if his family has abandoned him.
Brian, Brighton and their cell mate are eating sadza-a thick porridge made from maize meal. Because they are sick, Brian and the other severely ill prisoners are fed twice a day but it is only sadza and there is no meat or vegetables to go with it.
UPS: SYDNEY -
At times they get dry boiled maize called amagwadla… Each prisoner gets a scoop of that amagwadla maize a day. In the kitchen an argument starts over a small portion of meat. (VOICE SAYING IT IS NOT ENOUGH). For many prisoners this is the only meal of the day…a scoop of plain sadza.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - This twenty six year old man made it out just in time. He was an awaiting trial prisoner for car theft. He spent a year in jail, and was released on free bail when his condition worsened. He says doctors told him that he suffers from pellagra, a disease caused by lack of vitamin B3.
UPS: FORMER INMATE- When I was arrested I wasn’t sick. I started getting sick inside prison. Did you get any treatment? I was getting treatment. But it was not proper treatment. You get very little pap in prison. About this size, and at times vegetables. or no vegetables just water over it.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - A report by the Zimbabwean Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO) says at least 20 prisoners are dying each day across the country’s 55 prisons everyday. Overcrowding has only helped worsen the situation with about 40 000 inmates at any given time in facilities with capacity of only 17 000.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER We took our hidden camera inside Khami maximum prison to look at conditions here. It’s the second largest prison in the country and is situated in the city of Bulawayo.
UPS: SYDNEY - “I met this guy this old man…I thought he was old only to find out at a later stage he is not old. He is not old to be 40 years.
You can see the dark patches in his skin. It is just symptoms of pellagra. The disease is killing them inside. He begged me to find his family. And he gave me the address of his sister, it tried to find his sister but without success. I did not get anyone in the family.
This is the prison hospital. There is no medication and no doctors to attend to these patients.
UPS: JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - In a damning report on the funding of the Zimbabwe Prison Service (ZPS) to parliament, the Justice ministry said it was battling to feed inmates and to provide medication. HIV-positive inmates also do not have access to drugs to treat opportunistic infections. ZACRO found that because of the shortage of drugs, prisoners or their families have to buy their own medicine but families can hardly afford this.
UPS: SYDNEY - Families arrive for a visit. Most inmates never see their families because they live far away and cannot afford to travel. This couple is here to visit a sick uncle but are denied entry because they do not have proper ID documents. Later we filmed the uncle as he complains of itching and the lack of food.. He is from Hwange near Vic Falls and was sentenced for stock theft. He is only scheduled for release in 2010.
The food brought by relatives is a lifeline for the lucky ones. But it is also common for wardens to steal food brought by relatives.
UPS: Dumi – If you do npt have relatives, you won’t make ir out alive. It id tough.
UPS: SYDNEY -But although Brighton Mudadi’s wife and family live in the same town, they never visit him. That means no moral support and no proper nutrition to help his body fight the infections. With the help of a fellow inmate he washes himself and his soiled pants. He is very weak and he says that he struggles to hold anything in his stomach.
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER -
Senator Roy Bennett was recently released from prison. We showed him some of our visuals and he spoke about his experiences in Mutare prison where it took authorities a full day to remove a body from his cell.…
UPS: Roy Bennett watching video making comments: ”you see guys that have just come into prison…they put mentally disturbed people in there as well…it is filthy.”
UPS: ROY BENNETT-MDC SENATOR - When I got into the prison, and was put in a cell, the cell was overcrowded. There were 12 people in a cell that should hold six. There was only 2 blankets each all those blankets were lice ridden, they had not being washed or seen any hygiene for years and then the big shock came when I was led out of the cell in the morning. I was in the D class for dangerous prisoners. And they brought all these prisoners into the cage that held us. It was like being with people in a prisoner of war camp. People were absolutely, they were thin, all you could see were there eyes and their ribs, you could see right through to their backbone. And then when I started speaking to people and witnessed that people were only getting one meal a day. And that meal was supplied at lunch time and it was a piece of pap, sort of what they scoop in a plate, the size of your hand. And the only relish was salt mixed with water. That was what people were being fed on. There was absolutely no soap or toothpaste or toothbrushes and nothing in the morning and nothing in the evening. Basically what is in those prisons today is a severe travesty of human rights and and basically a human rights disaster.
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER -
Kerry Kay a human rights activist and the wife of Iain Kay, also a member of parliament spent three days in Harare police cells.
UPS: KERRY KAY/ACTIVIST- We could not sleep in the cells because there was so much human excreter pouring out of the loo and all over the cell floors, it was disgusting so it was all dark we were there for 3 days we were not even given a blanket or anything we just slept on the concrete floor, we tried to clean the one cell and clean the toilet..we just gave up.
UPS: ROY BENNETT-MDC SENATOR -There is the overwhelming stench of unclean toilets of excreter. That is there the whole time. There is no detergents to wash the toilets with, some of them don’t flush so it’s a case of pouring water into them. There is a total despair and total loss of dignity amongst the prisoners that have been there for some time. They honestly believe that they are not gonna get out and that their fate is sealed. Because there is no-one they can turn to, and there is absolutely no justice, whatsoever that they are able to hope for.
UPS: VOICER -This old man arrives at Khami prison to identify the body of a family member that has passed away. He received a letter informing him about the death of his grandson. The burial will now take place at the prison cemetery since the family has no money to bury him.
UPS: ROY BENNETT - There is no transport so they cant move the bodies. They cant take them to the mortuaries in town, because those mortuaries are full and they wont accept them. On three occasions they managed to get transport to take the body to the mortuary only to see the body returned because the mortuary would not accept the body. So it sits in the laundry of the prison till they get a plastic body bag out and put it in there because it’s burst. The smell, again you can smell it right throughout the prison. The relatives because of the economic situation are too poor or don’t have the means to be able to come and collect the bodies so eventually those bodies get a paupers burial.
UPS: SYDNEY - The bodies are piling up. Because we can’t find the families then it becomes our responsibility to bury the bodies. For us to cool the room because there is no mortuary. It’s not cold, there is no refrigerators there, we just put sand and water and then we pile the bodies there. So it becomes a bit cold. When the families come looking for their bodies they just go inside that room, and they have to remove other bodies and look for their specific body.
UPS: KERRY KAY - I think it was in Feb the Zim Broadcasting Corp announced the prisoners that died every night and asking relatives to come and collect them…miles away…by the time they would get into the prison to pick up their relatives they are handed a burial order and whats left of the possessions of the prisoner and the prisoner has already been buried at a graveyard called ….on Beatrice road.
UPS: SYDNEY - What happens in one grave, we pile 3 bodies in that grave.
UPS: VOICER - This woman’s husband is serving a nine year sentence for stealing meat. She says her husband is very sick and she is praying for him to be released. She has no food to take to him and is barely surviving selling firewood and dried vegetables.
UPS : WIFE OF INMATE – At one point he was so sick he almost died. He complains about food, I must bring him food because he is starving, and also washing soap. I have told him I have nothing, no food and no soap, I only use water to wash my clothes.
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER – Last week in Parliament the situation in prisons was discussed.We could not get official comment from government about the crisis but this was Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa response in parliament:
"The economic hardships facing the entire nation are hitting hardest inside prisons, where we have no transport means, no logistics, no uniforms, and statutory diets are not being complied with. We've raised this issue with the ministry of finance and also our cooperating partners especially the International Community of the Red Cross to seek assistance"
On a question of why they don’t release inmates who are at deaths door, he said “they cannot release people on medical parole who have committed serious crimes like rape only to rape again once they have recovered.”
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER – Irene Petraz of the Zimbabwean lawyers for human rights says the situation is out of control.
UPS: IRENE PETRAZ/NATIONAL DIRECTOR: ZIMBABWE LAWYERS FOR HUMAN RIGHTS - The conditions are so terrible that the prison service itself can’t cope with what is happening and they’ve realized the extent of the emergency and they are reaching out to organizations for assistance but at the same time I think you need a ministry that is concerned with what the conditions are like in prisons and concerned with making a difference.
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - While government is appealing for aid, Western leaders are waiting to see evidence of true power sharing before offering assistance or easing sanctions. The Deputy Justice Minister Jessie Majome says they acknowledge the problem and are appealing for short term relief from donors.
UPS: Deputy Justice Minister Jessie Majome - The Zimbabwe prison service is in dire need of assistance, even clothing.
UPS: VOICER - The man in the wheelchair died a week after my visit.I took a week to go and look for his sister. When I went back in the prison a week later I did not find him..he was dead. And unfortunately I did not even find the body.
UPS: SYDNEY - It is a few days later and I revisited Beitbridge prison. Brian Gumbo’s situation is getting worse and Brighton Mudadi has also become very weak and is in desperate need of urgent medical attention.
UPS: IRENE PETRAZ -I think we got a long way to go. There is a lot of violations in terms of the international treaties and the regional treaties that we are party to. And even under our own constitution and laws.
UPS: Douglas Gwatidzo/Zimbabwe Doctors for Human Rights – I think what the Government should appreciate is that being in prison it does not necessary mean that it is a dead sentence. There are minimum international standards that are put into place that govern the health and the nutritional prisoners and I think the government has to abide with the international standards
UPS:JOHANN ABRAHAMS- PRODUCER - Despite the hardships these inmates console themselves by singing hymns hoping for change. But change might be too late for Brain Gumbo and Brighton Mudadi this will ultimately be too little too late..