Prisoners starve as economic crisis worsens

By Lance Guma
14 June 2006

With inflation at over 1 200 percent and serious food and fuel shortages ravaging the country, the welfare of prisoners in Zimbabwe is probably not high on government’s list of priorities. The parliamentary portfolio committee on justice, legal and parliamentary affairs admitted in its own findings that the situation in the country’s prisons was disturbing. Inmates are going for days without food while water shortages are creating health hazards inside the cells. With a prison population of 21 000 crammed into 42 facilities designed to accommodate only 16 000 prisoners, cases of malnutrition and disease outbreaks were common.

Officials have admitted that AIDS related illnesses are straining the resources being allocated to the Zimbabwe Prison Service. Although prison authorities have supplied no official figures its thought a shocking number of prisoners are dying in jail. The situation for female prisoners is even more precarious given they need to use sanitary pads regularly and these are apparently not available in the prisons. The media has reported on countless occasions how government critics have been kept in filthy cells after being arrested by police.

Human rights lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa says the Law Society of Zimbabwe and the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZHLR) have done their best to highlight conditions in the country’s prisons. They regularly visit prisons and compile reports which are forwarded to the government and other interested parties. She says at least once a year conditions are reviewed but that the country’s economic collapse had severely affected prison infrastructure. She says fuel shortages have in most cases forced trials to be postponed and people who could have been released are staying longer in custody because judges cannot hear their cases on time.