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Furore over prison deaths
Kholwani Nyathi, The Standard (Zimbabwe)
January 06, 2008

http://allafrica.com/stories/200801070178.html

BULAWAYO - The bodies of three prisoners' were exhumed last Friday almost a fortnight after their pauper's burial because the prison authorities were accused of trying to conceal the cause of death.

The prisoners from Khami maximum prison were buried in a single grave at Luveve cemetery on 21 December.

Prison sources said the controversial episode could lift the lid on an alleged cover-up of prisoners being buried without the proper procedures being completed.

The sources said there was suspicion that such burials were designed to camouflage the cause of death of inmates who are said to have died of unnatural causes.

There has recently been a flood of reports of alarming deaths in overcrowded jails due to hunger-related ailments, among them pellagra, a vitamin deficiency disease caused by a lack of vitamin B3 and protein in the diet.

Other deaths being targeted for camouflage occur due to HIV and Aids complications, reportedly rampant in the prisons.

The relatives of Sibusiso Mkhwananzi (63), raised alarm after Zimbabwe Prison Service officials informed them of his death only after they had buried him.

They demanded the exhumation of the body.

Mkhwananzi was serving an 18-year sentence for rape. He was reportedly buried within 12 hours of his death, together with two prisoners from Masvingo, whose relatives, it was claimed, could not be located.

Mkhwananzi's relatives witnessed the exhumation and said they were shocked at his treatment while in detention and suspected foul play in his death.

"We have arranged for a private doctor to carry out a post-mortem examination before we can rebury him," said Samson Mkhwananzi, a family spokesperson.

"Ever since they informed us of my brother's death they have been trying to avoid the exhumation and we have now seen what they have been hiding.

"The bodies were just thrown one on top of the other, as if they were not human beings. Why were they rushing to bury him without following proper procedures?"

Mkhwananzi's body was on top of the pile and was barely 60 centimeters under a heap of soil. The other two bodies were reburied in the same grave.

A prison official, who refused to be identified by name, claimed there had been a mix-up of bodies at a funeral parlour, leading to Mkhwananzi's body being taken straight from the prison mortuary to the cemetery.

"We have an arrangement with the funeral parlour that when we bring bodies we should remove a certain number that has been there for a long time," he said.

"The people who were removing the bodies could have left Mkhwananzi's body in the car while removing others and ended up mixing it up with those that were due for burial."

The ZPS officer commanding Matabeleland, Rhodes Moyo, blamed the incident on a mix-up of bodies and pledged the government would meet the costs of the re-burial.

During the past two years, Parliament's portfolio committee on Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs has produced a string of reports painting a gloomy state of affairs in the country's 43 prisons.

The reports say prisoners go for days without food, toiletries and essential medical supplies.

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