Special Hearings — Prison Hearings — 1997-07-21

MR LEWIN: Can I therefore try and take us forward without denigrating anything of the past.  On the basis of your experience and your contact both with the police and/or the security police and the prisons officials, what sort of recommendations to you think we should make particularly about the regulation of prisons?

MR P NAIDOO: As I said I served my entire sentence with common-law prisoners and in my experience in prison at that time there is no such thing as rehabilitation.  I think prisoners were abused from morning till night.  People were swearing from morning till night and I believe that it should be built into our prison system about rehabilitation because I believe everybody has some kind of good in them and if people have committed a crime, a criminal offence they need to be rehabilitated.  We need look at ways and means in which to make them better people when they come out of prison.

MR LEWIN: Thank you.

MR I NAIDOO: That's absolutely true in fact the entire prison system as it is or as it was I should say makes good people into criminals.  A lot of the common-law prisoners that first come to prison, come for petty offences serving six months to a year and within a short space of time they get observed into the present condition and before you know what happens they are part and parcel of one gang or the other.  Then of course they are involved in assaults, murder and so forth so the whole system has to be looked into and we have to find a more human system to imprison our people.

MR LEWIN: Could I ask, Prema you were the last person to be in prison at that stage in the late '80's, no it was '84 sorry so at that stage it was still very much segregated in racial terms?

MR P NAIDOO: Absolutely there was ... much segregation, there used to be ... happening in prison, for example the diet.  They had a special diet for African people and a different diet for Indians.  African prisoners used to get mielie rice and samp where Indian prisoners used to get bread and when you live in one cell whether you're a political prisoner or whether you're a common-law prisoner it's a problem because one part of the community gets a particular diet and the other part gets another diet.  That was the diet and you had to take it or leave it.  In prison, Indres didn't mention this, when Indres was arrested he was a vegetarian and the prison at the time didn't make allowances for vegetarians or people of different religious beliefs who eat certain things and who don't eat certain things, you had to eat the food or go without.  I remember on many occasions, we are not Muslims but Muslims would never eat pork and on many occasions when we were detained the only thing on the menu was pork.  Not for religious reasons I just don't like pork and the warders used to jokingly say that this pork is koshered in a mocking way, mocking at people's religion and people's beliefs.

MR LEWIN: Thank you.  Mr Chair if I could just ask one final question before passing back to you.
 Prema in your statement talking about the detention at John Vorster Square when visited by your wife, this actually ties up with other cases that we've had, could I repeat it or could you repeat it?  Do you remember the statement from Conrad or Cronwright I presume it is?

MR P NAIDOO: My wife is here and when I was detained my wife became a member of the Detainees Parents Support Committee and they used to have placard demonstrations outside John Vorster Square on many occasions.   I was never allowed to go to the window to look out while they were interrogating me but I heard them talking while they were interrogating and Cronwright himself, although he never physically abused me, verbally abused me and my wife on many occasions.  When my wife visited on the first occasion my wife telephonically made the arrangements that my wife, my sons and my mother will come for the visit but when they came to John Vorster Square they only allowed my wife to come.  Cronwright was quite abusive.  He said to my wife that because she demonstrated outside and because she went to the Rand Daily Mail, because the clothing that I sent back, when they interrogated me my lips started to bleed and there was some blood on my clothing and my wife didn't know where the blood had come from,  she went to the Rand Daily Mail, or the Star or whatever, they actually said to her that because she had gone to the press, they were going to punish me further.

MR LEWIN: And the comment about the heights? ...(tape blank)

MR P NAIDOO: They said to my wife that they were going to rename John Vorster Square, they said they call it Tumour Heights but when they finished with me they will call it Prema Heights.

MR LEWIN: Thank you.

DR BORAINE: Mrs Seroke?

MRS SEROKE: I notice in your statement you say that the whole family was reunited after twenty eight years and then you say when Ama, your mum had her second and fatal heart attack, was this so overwhelming for her, this reunion?  Can you explain that for us because I find that very moving that a mother who has had her entire family separated from her should now die when they are together?  ...

MR I NAIDOO: In fact from 1963 right up to 1990 we were never together.  I was on Robben Island for ten years, Shanthie disappeared into prison for a number of years, Ramnie went into exile thereafter and Shanthie joined him in exile and when I came into prison, I went into exile.  So in the twenty year period my mum never had her five children all together although she saw some of us.  She came to London where she saw Ramnie and Shanthie and she also had the opportunity of coming to Maputo to see me while I was in Maputo.  When Shanthie, myself and Ramnie returned to South Africa in 1991 she was very, very pleased by this, she felt that this was what she has fought for all her life and we are now in the verge of getting our freedom.  As a result we got together and in '91 when she turned eighty four years old.  We decided to give her a nice big birthday party where a number of our comrades were invited, people like comrade Walter Sisulu, comrade ... and a number of others came along and my mum felt that this was in fact what she really wanted.  Her death in 1993, my mum was suffering from heart problems but this is as a result of the hardship under which she went all these years, going from one prison to another to visit her sons and daughters.  Like Shanthie says she doesn't know if there is another mother who has seen the inside of more prisons that she has.  She had seen practically all the prisons from here to Cape Town.
 She'd also seen the police stations in the Gauteng area.  I think this was the position with her and her death in 1993 is because of the hard life she led all these years.