Death never far away, say released convicts

Released inmates interviewed by The Zimbabwean said they were thankful to god for sparing them from the hunger and disease that have plagued the countrys jails in the past years.

Prison life was so tough. There was lots of disease and persistent hunger. We were continually subjected to plain beans, boiled cabbages and sometimes porridge, said 25-year-old Chazika Chazika, a burglary convict who was released from Harare central prison after completing 10 months of a 20-month sentence. An international outcry over rights abuses by President Robert Mugabes government pressured the government into the early release of 2,500 convicts under a presidential pardon.

Zimbabwes judge president Rita Makarau had said sentencing people to jail terms under the current situation was tantamount to passing death sentences on them. Film footage, shot secretly in the prisons, alerted the world to the dire conditions faced by the starving prisoners, and humanitarian groups sent in supplies of water, food, clothing and medicines.

Reports say the rate of deaths has since dropped from three to two per week. Former prisoner Costa Vinyu (19) said he would rather brave poverty in the outside world than steal and go back to the life he had experienced during the 10 months of his incarceration. Life was so unbearable inside. Our prisons are not places one should go back to. Diseases were rampant and hunger was persistent, he said. I thank god I survived the cholera outbreak. Several of my friends died through the disease. Our cells were always overcrowded. Our diet only changed on July 12 this year, when the Red Cross came in to donate foodstuffs. Before that, our meal times were irregular.

Tawanda Murodzi, another ex-inmate released after serving two years of a five-year sentence, said inmates were constantly subjected to long periods of starvation. We could spend the whole day without eating anything, he said. Most of the time we would go up to 9pm without taking any meal. We would then each be given a cup of boiled cabbage. The next morning we would drink a lot of water to stave off hunger. We experienced diseases such as pellagra. We saw the whole cholera havoc wreck our jails. Colleagues died in our midst. It was a question of when the disease would catch up with us, said Murodzi. Among those freed were women prisoners, those in open prisons and life inmates who had served 20 or more years. The amnesty excluded prisoners jailed for serious crimes, including murder, rape and vehicle hijacking.