31 March 2009
Harare — A Zimbabwean government minister has admitted to the dire conditions being experienced by the country's 14,000 prisoners.
"Economic hardships are hitting hardest inside prisons," justice minister Patrick Chinamasa, a member of President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party, recently told parliament.
"There are no uniforms; food requirements are not being met. We are required to meet a statutory diet but it is not being complied with; rations for prisoners are not being supplied due to inadequate funding. We have recorded malnutrition cases."
Chinamasa's admission comes a few days before the broadcast on South African television of an investigative documentary programme showing images of prisoners reminiscent of the worst of the continent's famines.
The Special Assignment documentary "Hell Hole", was secretly filmed and graphically illustrates conditions in two of Zimbabwe's 55 prisons, showing emaciated inmates surviving on a daily handful of sadza, or maize-meal porridge, the staple food.
The programme will be broadcast on 31 March 2009.
A report by Zimbabwe's Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender, an NGO advocating the rights of prisoners, said at least 20 inmates were dying daily in the country's jails.
High court judge Nicholas Ndou said after a recent tour of prison complexes, where he witnessed juvenile and adult prisoners incarcerated together, that there "were prisoners suffering from skin diseases such as pellagra, and respiratory diseases. Several corpses were placed in a room for several days and were in an advanced stage of decomposition."
Pellagra is a disease caused by a lack of vitamins and proteins.
Chinamasa denied that cholera, which has killed more than 4,000 Zimbabweans since August 2008, had broken out in the prisons, although he admitted there were incidents of dysentery.
Prisoner officers, who declined to be identified, told IRIN that cholera was rampant in the prisons because water infrastructure had collapsed.
Prison gardens looted
Previously, prisoners would cultivate food gardens and practice animal husbandry, but "senior politicians started taking free prison labour for use on their own farms, resulting in production going down. In some instances, implements on prison farms were looted by senior politicians," prison officers told IRIN.
Chinamasa informed parliament that "We are working on a feeding scheme. Zimbabwe Prison Services seeks to mobilize material to increase farm produce at its farms for nutritional support to inmates."
The arrest and detention of Roy Bennett, the Movement for Democratic Change's proposed deputy minister of agriculture, highlighted the dire conditions experienced by the 14,000 prisoners in the nation's jails.
On his release, Bennett told local media: "There are gross human rights abuses behind those walls ... Five people died while I was inside and it took the prison officers four to five days to remove the bodies. The situation behind there is pathetic."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
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What a load of manure and the sad thing is, you know it as well as all the other readers. Zimbabwe against the world mentality and Mugabe is the victim. Pitiful argument and you know it.
Chokora,
Your comment is as laughable as when you said that nearly 1 million children were raped in the UK last year.
Although for someone who considers Idi Amin as his hero, I'm not surprised your comments come from a deluded mind.
Firstly, you say that the UN has imposed sanctions on Zimbabwe. Can you please elaborate as to what these sanctions are? We all know you have made this up as there are no santions from the UN on Zimbabwe.
2) How can you say that economic sanctions have killed Zimbabweans, where the Mugabe government is directly responsible for taking productive farms off farmers and giving them to politicians. Doesnt Grace have 3 farms? Why do judges need farms? This is the direct cause of the starvation in Zimbabwe and has nothing to do with outside influence.
Clearly the 'sanctions' are an excuse used for propogada purposes to mask the severe missmanagement of the economy by Mugabe and his cronies. It wasnt the west that continually printed money until the Zimbabwe currency became extinct.
It wasnt the west that beat up, tortured and murdered MDC supporters so they wouldnt vote Mugabe.
It wasnt the west that installed a dictator that got even less votes than McCain did.
It wasnt the west that stole $7.3 million from the Global Fund to finance their back pockets.
It wasnt the west that abducted people.
It wasnt the west that bought Mugabe's daughter a mansion while her people starve
I could go on for days.
Why should someone condemn the US for putting sanctions on ministers and cronies that removed and destroyed democracy, human rights and freedom of expression in Zimbabwe?
Would you trade with your neighbour if he beat, raped, murdered and tortured?
"The white man's UN made no attempt to verify the facts regarding rhodie Bennett's assertions before printing them. Why?"
Because it was a quote you idiot. How dumb are you?
And if you are suggesting that Bennett was responsible for those deaths, you are simply clasping at deluded straws.
Grow a brain you stupid muppet!
The mendacious broken record rocks from one of THE PEOPLE OF NO.
Pitiful.
I see you have no logical debate to the points I have made, therefore you must agree with them. I thank you for your time.
Much more like the PEOPLE IN THE BUSINESS OF DERAILING THE GNU.
Silly rhodies: copycat rhetoricians.
By the way, you guys are devoid of rhetorical creativity: first learn how to dance, then perhaps, but only perhaps you'll get gift the gab and, maybe, the pen.
Anyway, we don't care about....
Surely the Government should only incarcerate the very worst offenders, and thereby keep the prison population to a bare minimum, if it cannot feed and house them to an acceptable standard?
Somehow the duplicitous UN and its mouthpiece IRIN do not consider the economic sanctions imposed by the UN's whites to be a factor in the horrid conditions faced by all Zimbabweans - not just the prison population.
" .. Bennett told local media: .... Five people died while I was inside ..."
And he said that to NPR, a foreign media of those who imposed economic sanctions that have killed Zimbabweans.
In that interview, he didn't, even once, condemn those who imposed the sanctions. Not one unflattering utterance against the enemy - in memory of the dead Zimbabweans that he would (duplicitously) call compatriots.
The white man's UN made no attempt to verify the facts regarding rhodie Bennett's assertions before printing them. Why?
Somehow, Bennett didn't die in there. Was a thorough investigation carried out to determine that Bennett played no role in the deaths of those five natives - the natives he loathes? Damn rhodie!