Community urged to help prisons

Speaking at a ceremony to receive entertainment equipment and bibles donated to Woodvale Prison by the Seventh Day Adventist (SAD) church, the deputy officer commanding prisons in Matebeleland region, Assistant Commissioner Claydon James Poti Seulah said the cash-strapped prisons department could not shoulder the burden of looking after prisoners alone. Today we are witnessing the installation of a satellite dish here, which clearly shows that the rehabilitation of inmates is not the responsibility of ZPS alone but the community at large, said Seulah. The satellite dish, decoder, a television set and bibles were donated by the SDA from Queens Park suburb in Bulawayo.

Inmates at Woodvale Prison, which is located near Joshua Mqabuko International airport just outside Bulawayo city, will consider themselves luck to have satellite television, a rare thing in Zimbabwes under-funded jails where prisoners are often without food, uniforms and other basic necessities. A South African television documentary last year that showed appalling conditions in Zimbabwes jails, where inmates were shown starving and gravely ill with some of them visibly on the verge of dying, sparked an international outcry, with human rights groups accusing the Harare government of violating the rights of prisoners.

The government, which initially denied that the horrifying images shown on television were taken from inside Zimbabwes jails, responded months later by declaring an amnesty for thousands of prisoners in a bid to reduce congestion in jails, while the International Committee of the Red Cross moved with medicines and food for prisoners.