Zimbabwe’s deadly prisons condemned

Images of naked, emaciated prisoners on the point of death shocked the world last year when sympathetic guards smuggled video footage out of prisons and sold it to international broadcasters.

MDC treasurer-general Roy Bennett’s detention also did a lot to throw the spotlight on the horrific conditions in the prisons.

Then judge president Rita Makarau weighed in with the suggestion that sentencing anyone to time behind bars was like sentencing them to death because of the inhuman conditions.

Finance minister Tendai Biti last week told parliament that he had received a request from Patrick Chinamasa, the Minister of Justice, for additional funding to the prisons ahead of the ICJ’s first inspection expected next year.

However, Chinamasa is blamed for allowing the situation to deteriorate as Zanu (PF) routinely used the prison system to punish critics of President Robert Mugabe.

Biti said: “As an occasional guest of the prisons, I know exactly what needs to be done.”

The minister said he understood the needs and would avail funds through the budget system to ease the situation. He said the government would also provide money to improve detention cells at police stations, where rotten food and lice-infested tattered blankets are standard fare.

The MDC secretary-general has been detained many times by the Mugabe government. In 2008, he was charged with treason but the widely-condemned charges believed to have been politically-motivated were later dropped after the state failed to substantiate them in court. Virtually all top MDC officials, including Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, have shared the horror of the country’s remand prisons but few have ever been convicted of any crime.

Of late, prison deaths have escalated to alarming proportions. According to officials who spoke to this newspaper, many of the dead are just dumped in mortuaries where their bodies are left to rot.