ZIMBABWE: Prisoners routinely dying from starvation, illness

Two former inmates have described to IRIN the horrendous conditions prevailing in Zimbabwe's prison system, where prisoners routinely die from illness and starvation, and are urging human rights organisations to make an independent assessment of the country's jails.

Zimbabwe has roughly 35,000 people incarcerated in 42 jails, but this is well over their intended capacity of about 17,000 inmates.

The country is in the in the midst of an economic meltdown, in which the plight of prisoners seems all but forgotten: inflation is running at 2,200 percent, unemployment is above 80 percent and shortages of electricity, fuel and food are commonplace.

Moreover, as a consequence of drought and the disruptions to agriculture caused by President Robert Mugabe's fast-track land reform programme, which redistributed white-owned farmland to landless blacks, the staple food, maize, is also in short supply.

John, a recently released inmate who declined to be identified, told IRIN that there were often food shortages. "In the morning, prisoners drink a very watery broth made from maizemeal, water and salt; in the afternoon they are fed plain green vegetables with 'sadza' [maizemeal porridge], which is repeated in the evenings."

He said there were times when they had to make do with a single meal per day, and the food was often so badly prepared that some inmates had stopped eating.

In the capital, Harare, a medical orderly employed by the health department and working in prison services, told IRIN that more than one hundred inmates had died of pellagra at Harare Central and Chikurubi Maximum prisons since the beginning of the year.

Pellagra is caused by a deficiency of vitamin B3 and trypophan, an essential amino acid found in meat, poultry, fish and eggs, all foodstuffs that are no longer available in the canteens of the Zimbabwe Prison Services, or to employees of the Zimbabwe Republic Police and the Zimbabwe National Army. The security forces are now served sadza and brown beans, because the government has insufficient funds to provide other foodstuffs.

The symptoms of pellagra include high sensitivity to sunlight, aggression, insomnia, weakness and mental confusion, followed by dementia and, eventually, death.
"There is a disaster waiting to happen, if it is not already happening - every day, dead bodies are recovered, especially at Chikurubi Maximum Prison, where as many as 10 deaths can be recorded in one day. Health conditions are also terrible, as the Zimbabwe Prison Services has no money to treat the inmates," the medical orderly, who asked to remain anonymous, told IRIN.

Tendai, another former inmate of Chikurubi prison, told IRIN that the prison authorities were also no longer able to provide them with toiletries. "If your relatives do not bring you some soap then you will go on and develop skin diseases. In addition, the government is no longer able to provide inmates with prison garb, leaving many to depend on relatives to supply them with clothes, or be forced to go naked."

In the past three months there was no clean drinking water available at Chikurubi, Tendai said, because the Zimbabwe National Water Authority, a parastatal company, did not have the necessary capacity to supply water to the high-security complex. Water bowsers had been brought to the prisons, but the water quality was inadequate for drinking.

A recent visit by a delegation of parliamentarians to Chikurubi found that toilets had not been flushed for weeks because there was no running water, and pages torn from Bibles were being used as toilet paper. The unsanitary conditions have made diarrhoea and skin diseases a permanent feature of prison life.

In response to the rapidly deteriorating conditions in the prison system, justice minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government was working on formulating an open prison system, in which offenders would serve part of their jail terms at their homes to help decongest the prisons.