Johannesburg - A soccer match unexpectedly cancelled on a hot summer’s day sparked the violence at Groenpunt prison.
Now a report by MPs points to senior Department of Correctional Services (DCS) officials for their dismal management of Groenpunt, where complaints were ignored for months, and assaults on prisoners and warders were not recorded.
On January 7, violence broke out at Groenpunt Maximum Security Centre in the Free State while members of the portfolio committee on correctional services were there for an oversight visit, along with journalists.
That day, The Star saw officials assault an inmate; the authorities destroyed photographers’ pictures, and the prisoner later died.
Both the committee and the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) investigated.
The committee’s report describes a bleak life at Groenpunt.
Food went missing, lunch and supper arrived together, plumbing was broken, medical care was poor, rehabilitation was limited, inmates were exploited by officials, there were delays in appeals and grievances, and a terminally ill prisoner was returned from a state hospital to the prison hospital to die while nobody could say whether there had been a medical parole application for him.
Mentally ill prisoners, sometimes violent, stayed in the prison hospital with the sick.
The prison was a hotspot for gangs like the “Airforce”, which specialised in breakouts.
Complaints by warders and inmates were ignored.
The prison was supposed to hold about 1 200 inmates but was 132 percent overcrowded, there wasn’t enough staff, and the shift system made matters worse.
On January 7, the prisoners were supposed to have a soccer match, but instead officials held a meeting. When prisoners were unlocked at 11am, “they had grown exceedingly agitated, not least because it had grown too hot to continue with the soccer match”, said the report.
There were only 10 warders to deal with all 728 inmates in the unit who were unlocked together.
Inmates refused to go back to their cells and demanded to see the Groenpunt head, who could not calm them, and then the area commissioner, which was refused. When DCS emergency support teams (ESTs) tried to force them back to cells, violence erupted.
“The ensuing unrest, which took approximately two days to defuse, started later that afternoon, and saw inmates throwing rocks at officials, breaking open cells, setting fire to mattresses and offices in the unit, and looting,” said the report.
Off-duty officials called in didn’t come, the head of the prison stayed in his office, and the chief operating officer - a woman - had to take charge.
The generator didn’t work and firefighting equipment hadn’t been serviced since 2008.
Officials videoed the violence, then claimed there was no footage because the batteries were flat.
The SAPS took two-and-a-half hours to arrive because the road was so bad, and stayed for a week.
“After the situation had been brought under control, inmates were assaulted by DCS officials, including EST members, who, the JICS inspector observed, assaulted inmates who were posing no threat and were co-operating with them,” said the report.
Nine officials and 104 inmates were injured, but the committee couldn’t tell when the last 40 inmates were injured.
The committee learnt - “through the media” - that one prisoner died from assaults by the EST; this death was not reported to the JICS, as legally required.
Officials failed to report at least five previous cases of officials stabbed by inmates, and assaults by officials on inmates.
After the clashes, 857 prisoners were moved to other prisons in a chaotic plan that saw some returned to Groenpunt and moved again, and some searched on arrival at other prisons where contraband like cellphones, knives, batteries and SIM cards were found.
The committee listed recommendations,, including addressing inmates’ concerns and using emergency teams only for security problems, not as an alternative to officials doing their jobs.
“The committee notes that a number of the contributing factors identified by DCS and JICS officials in preliminary reports, and during the oversight visit, have repeatedly been brought to the attention of the DCS senior management in the course of our oversight activities, and in our reports adopted by the National Assembly.
“These recommendations have, in the main, not been responded to, and very few, if any, have been implemented,” said the report.
On Wednesday, DCS said measures were being taken to ensure “a culture of human rights and order” in facilities and to prevent a repeat of the Groenpunt incident.
“Disciplinary proceedings against officials, and offenders, are also currently being finalised,” said DCS spokesman Koos Gerber. “We want to reiterate that unlawful attacks by officials on inmates, as well as riots instigated by inmates in correctional centres and attacks on officials, will not be tolerated.
“The balance between maintaining internal security and order, as well as rehabilitation, is paramount. To promote good governance, ethical administration and effective human resource management, we declared 2013 ‘The Year of the Correctional Official’.”
The Star