Today I’m off to visit a friend in Harare, Zimbabwe, with the memories of yesterday’s visit to Johannesburg’s Leewcop prison still firmly in my head.   Some Reflections from Leewcop Prison, JohannesburgAt first sight, you would be forgiven for thinking that Leewcop is a leafy residential suburb, and not notice that in fact it contains 4 separate jails, holding over 4000 prisoners in total.   Once through the gate, there are roads, a petrol station, a few shops, nice suburban houses with gardens, and tree-lined avenues.    No building is higher than 1 storey, and there is much space between various buildings.  

It takes a while before you notice wire separating some of the buildings, and strangely oddly dressed characters, in seemingly stark contrast to their leafy environment:  men, (all black) dressed in bright orange trousers, matching shirts, with black circle designs ingrained into the orange.  Some are gardening, some are sitting at the entrance to doorways, seemingly chatting, others holding gardening tools in their hands.  For a spit second, it gives a picture of an Apartheid era.    But I was to discover later, that younger people, in their early 20s, claimed that they had no personal experience of Apartheid. At least, that’s what they told me.  

“Medium A”  (where men are either placed or moved, to serve middle ranging sentences – several years, approx 4 – 7,  was called “Open Camp.”  But to enter I had to pass a double row of wire fencing with a trench in between the two.  Not all inmates have individual cells, and there is no such thing as a “vulnerable” wing.  Everyone is placed together.   I listened with admiration to the men who had completed their peer education training as facilitators of the “My Path” Khulissa programme, utterly convinced that they and others needed to choose other ‘paths’ for themselves and their lives. 

Later, in the Khulissa office,  a small group of young ex-offenders had been invited to meet me.  Each of these young people had served several years and had since remained out of jail for at least 2 years or more.  But the stigma attached to offending has left them un-employable, and without that stability, life for them remains tough.   The My Path programme had changed their outlook and their mentality, but not a new life.  Finding paid work remained an almost impossible challenge.  None of them were able to find work, no one would take them on, they said, and they did not like having to still be named “ex-offender.”   They had served their sentences, they told me.  It’s finished, they told me.  Now they wanted to be just the same as everyone else.    “Have you never stolen even a sweet from someone,” one  asked me?  Of course I have, I replied.  “The only difference between you and me then” he said, “is that you didn’t get caught.  We are all the same.  But unlike you, we have to live forever with this stigma.”