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'It's almost a form of prison genocide'
Basildon Peta, Independent Online
November 23, 2008

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=84&art_id=vn20081123101729903C546224

At least 20 prisoners are dying every day of hunger and disease in Zimbabwe's over-crowded jails because President Robert Mugabe's embattled government can no longer provide food to prisons.

While weary Zimbabweans have grown accustomed to a life of food shortages, lack of water and electricity and ubiquitous outbreaks of disease, like the current cholera epidemic which has claimed nearly 300 lives, officials said the situation was "indescribable" for the tens of thousands confined in Zimbabwe's notoriously inhumane prisons.

"An ordinary jail sentence in Zimbabwe today is as good as a death sentence," said a senior prison official interviewed last week.

"We can no longer cope with the numbers of those dying and whose bodies are not being collected by struggling relatives."

Two senior Zimbabwean prison officials, who agreed to be interviewed on the state of Zimbabwean prisons last week on condition they were not be named, described the dire situation in Zimbabwe's jails.

They said at least 20 prisoners die daily in the different prisons across the country, due mainly to a lack of food and ubiquitous diseases.

On one day alone in September this year, 57 deaths were recorded from different jails around the country.

The officers spoke as Zimbabwe's main state referral hospitals in Bulawayo and Harare had virtually closed shop because of a shortage of water, drugs, equipment and staff.

The Mugabe government has been underplaying the health crisis, particularly the latest cholera outbreak, admitting to "only 90 deaths".

James McGee, the US ambassador to Harare, whose government helps fund HIV/Aids-linked health initiatives in Zimbabwe, said 294 deaths had so far been recorded.

The figure has since been confirmed to Zimbabwean media outlets by health workers and non-governmental organisations, who have warned the cholera death figures could be higher since most victims are dying at home. The United Nations World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the 294 deaths late on Friday and warned that the situation was worsening.

But while the cholera outbreak, which fleeing Zimbabweans have since spread to South Africa, killing three in Musina last week, is in the public domain, the most suffering away from public glare is unfolding in Zimbabwe's prisons.

The prison officers emphasised that they were being conservative in their estimates of at least 20 deaths per day as national figures were not always made available and, they were basing their estimates on the deaths being reported at the big prisons they worked at in Harare and Bulawayo Chikurubi and Khami maximum prisons respectively.

The number did not include figures at prisons in other remote areas like Mutimurefu Prison in Masvingo, Hwahwa Prison in Gweru, Binga Prison in Binga, Anju Prison in Nyamandlovu, among others.

The prison officials said food supplies to prisons had virtually stopped with prisoners being fed on boiled cabbages once a day if they are lucky. The boiled cabbages are not accompanied by any starch, particularly the staple sadza (thick pap or porridge), because there is no maize meal in Zimbabwe.

On other days when there is no boiled cabbage the prisoners get man'ai (boiled maize). The food is served in small portions once a day during "good times" but mostly once in two or even four days.

"It's almost some form of prison genocide," said one official.

The situation was made worse by the total lack of medical care in prison clinics.

"If the public hospitals are closing because of all the problems being talked about, imagine the situation in prison clinics. It's not even worth talking about," said the official.

"Diseases are so widespread in the prisons that it no longer matters for us to determine which is the most rampant. We just gather dead bodies," said the other official based in Harare.

"Even those ill prisoners who might have survived if they got medication end up dying because of lack of food."

Relatives struggling with the economic crisis no longer bothered to answer appeals to collect dead bodies and prison mortuaries are overflowing. Those prisoners with sympathetic relatives were not spared the ordeal as hungry prison guards stole their food brought from home.

The situation was worsened by the lack of fuel, which has prevented the prisons service from taking prisoners to court.

Efforts to get official comment from Paradzai Zimondi, the Zimbabwe Prisons Service boss, failed. - Independent Foreign Service.

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