A brief history on South African prisons and prisoners

Introduction

In 1948 the National government was voted into power and instituted apartheid. This lead to an increase in the number of people being incarcerated due to petty and severe apartheid laws. Between the 1960s and the unbanning of the liberation organisations and the beginning of negotiations, many South African prisons were used to hold political prisoners, detainees and common-law prisoners. Political prisoners were those sentenced in terms of the Suppression of Communists Act and other security legislation such as the Internal Security Act, the Sabotage Act and the Terrorism Act.

The history of the Pretoria Central Premises

There are six prisons on one premise each built at different times.

The first prison - Pretoria Central

In 1858 building plans were drawn for the first prison in Pretoria, Transvaal (now Gauteng). Nothing happened until 5 April 1865 when magistrate C Moll sentenced Alexander Anderson to 12 months hard labour. There was no building, and they arrived at a compromise, Anderson was to build the prison himself in return for an early release. Anderson started work on the jail on the corner of Pretorius and Paul Kruger Streets. This building was like the ‘hartbeeshuis’ (a house made of bulrushes) and not very ‘safe’ due to the materials used to build the prison. [1]

The second prison - Pretoria Central

On 3 March 1873, the Volksraad (the Boer Republic parliament) approved the decision to build a new prison, which was built on the corner of present Bosman and Visagie Streets. (Later the building for the Mint was erected on the edge and presently the Cultural History Museum is situated in that building.) The west side of the premises was bordered by Potgieter Street and the south side near Minnaar Street had houses for the wardens. The prison itself was in the north-eastern corner and from there up to the western border were gardens and the gallows – executions were carried out in public, on Saturday mornings. This prison had cells for white and black male offenders, the death row cells, cells for white and black female offenders and a cell for awaiting trial people. In 1893, ten more cells were built. The building was not escape-proof, and in 1894, the slate stone floor was replaced with a cement floor to prevent prisoners escaping. [2]

The third prison - Pretoria Central

The Anglo-Boer War of 1899 – 1902 stopped all work on the new prison building. The site that they decided to build the prison on was far outside Pretoria in the veld. It was the southernmost point of Potgieter Street. In April 1902 they started with the surrounding wall. Tenders were needed to build individual buildings, and the company that received the tender was Brown & Cottrill of Johannesburg in 1903. After four months, nothing happened, and the tender was revoked and given to a company called Maudsley. After another setback, the tender was given to another company called Prentice & Mackey in November 1904. The prison was finished in 1907. Between 1912 and 1938, the communal cells changed into single cells.

In 2000 they started with changes in the prison – the old kitchen was replaced with a more modern complex, the old office and previous kitchen area were replaced by contact and non-contact visiting areas and by new offices. Every cell received a washbasin and toilet. The electricity wires on the outside of the walls were replaced and hidden (electricity was brought into the prison in the 1930s). The school section had modernised classrooms, and a library was also built. [3]

Pretoria Prison

Pretoria Prison is part of a giant prison complex referred to (incorrectly) as ‘Pretoria Central’. In this complex, there are three separate prisons or prison clusters: Pretoria Central Prison proper, Pretoria Prison and a third known only as ‘Maximum’ or ‘Beverley Hills’. Also in the complex are warders’ houses, a prison shop, a shooting range and sporting and other recreational facilities for the warders.[4]

Pretoria Central proper consists of a number of separate prison buildings, one for white males, one for black males, one for white females and one for black females. Central is a ‘national’ prison and a reception centre where many prisoners start and end their sentences. Pretoria Prison is Pretoria’s local prison and consists of ‘non-white’ sections for ordinary prisoners, possibly separate ‘white’ sections for ordinary prisoners, and a maximum-security section. ‘Maximum’ is a special high-security prison for recidivists, habitual escapees, the ‘State President’s patients’ and the condemned.[5]

Pretoria Local Prison was built in the early 1900s, but after ‘Pretoria Central’ was built. The main entrance was Potgieter Street.

Pretoria Local housed local prisoners (divided by race) as well as white political prisoners (black political prisoners were held on Robben Island and several local prisons).

Female prison

The building was originally for awaiting trials and after a daring escape in 1979, the place was rebuilt to accommodate the political offenders. In 1996 women offenders were moved into this building. The women were at first in the new section next to Central and from then to the present one.

C-Max Prison

The maximum prison was built approximately in 1965/6. The executions done in this prison lasted from 1968  to 1989. The prison held some of the most notorious and ruthless offenders and those who were charged with treason.

It was a single building consisting of only 52 cells and built in the late 1960s specifically for white male political prisoners. At no stage had there ever been more than 22 political prisoners in the prison, with the average complement being about 10. For this reason, the remaining cells were used for housing awaiting-trial prisoners, known in prison language as ‘stokkies’, from the Xhosa word isitokisi, meaning ‘prison’.[6]

Renaming of Pretoria Central Prison

On 13 April 2013, Pretoria Central Prison was renamed Kgosi Mampuru II Management Area by President Jacob Zuma. It is sometimes referred to as Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Services. The new name is the same as the street name (renamed in the previous year), with both now bearing the name of Kgosi Mampuru, a 19th-century local chief who resisted colonial rule and was subsequently hanged in 1883.

As part of its repressive strategy, the apartheid state was quick to use the death penalty against its political opponents. Prisoners sentenced to hang were sent to Death Row in Pretoria Central Prison to await execution. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the apartheid government executed about 134 political prisoners. [7]

First people to be executed

The first people to be executed at Death Row in Pretoria Central for political reasons on 5 September 1961 were Thompson Chamane, Joe Mlangeni Khuzwayo, Maqadini Lushozi, Mahemu Goqo, Brian Ganozi Mgumbungu, Schoolboy Mthembu and Payiyana Dladla. They were hanged after being accused of killing nine apartheid police officers on Sunday, January 24, 1960. There were others who were executed following a clash that erupted in Cato Manor,  outside Durban, in January 1960, during the beer hall riots. [8]

Last person to be hanged

The last person to be hanged at Death Row in Pretoria Central was Jeffrey Boesman Mangena on 29 September 1989. Boesman, a member of the banned African National Congress (ANC), was convicted of the 1985 killing of Mellina Fass, a teacher who apparently defied a school boycott in the Eastern Cape township of Sterkstroom called by anti-apartheid activists.

The first MK cadres to be hanged

The first uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) cadres to be hanged for MK operations included Vuyisile Mini, a trade union organiser who joined the ANC in 1951. They were charged with 17 counts of sabotage, death of a former police informer as well as other political charges.

Zinakile Mkaba and Wilson Khayingo were executed on 6 November 1964. Khanyingo offered his house as a temporary refuge for MK members leaving the country or returning to carry out operations in the Eastern Cape. He was also charged with 16 counts of sabotage). Nolali Mpentse, Daniel Ndongeni and Samuel Jonas followed them to the gallows on 23 February 1965.

There were many campaigns opposing the death penalty and against detention without trial, both inside South Africa and internationally. When negotiations for a transition from apartheid to democracy got underway, the issue of the death penalty was tabled for discussion. The government and the African National Congress (ANC) agreed to enact a moratorium on the death penalty in 1990. Later, in 1993, the National Party (NP) re-enacted the death penalty, but no one was executed.

After the first democratic election in April 1994, a new constitutional dispensation was established, and the death penalty was abolished on 6 June 1995. The gallows where people were executed were dismantled the following year. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) concluded: 

All executions of persons convicted of political offences and/or which were politically motivated in the mandate period constituted gross violations of the rights of those so killed, for which the former government is held accountable.

Those who had been executed were buried in pauper’s graves or on sites where protests were unlikely to erupt. In October 2010, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) exhumed the bodies of six Poqo members who were hanged, and they were reburied at the Rebecca Street Cemetery in Pretoria. Among the deceased were Zibongile Serious Dodo, Nontasi Albert Sheweni, Jim Mountain Ngantweni, Donker Ntsabo, Veyisile Sharps Qoba and Mqokeleli Gladstone Nqulwana.

In November 2011 the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) announced that the gallows at Pretoria Central Prison would be restored and converted into a museum. After this announcement, on 15 December 2011, President Jacob Zuma officially opened the memorial museum and paid tribute to those who were executed for political offences. [9]

Robben Island

Robben Island’s significant place in the world today is forged out of a long history of human habitation and use, in which the symbols of oppression and struggle against such oppression have been laid down repeatedly alongside each other. The island’s history can be divided into five phases, culminating in its conversion into the Robben Island Museum in 1997. The historical phases are (i) occasional settlement before 1652 (ii) use as a colonial prison, 1657-1921 (iii) use as a colonial hospital, 1846-1931 (iv) use as a naval base, 1939-1959 and (v) use as an apartheid prison, 1961-1996. [10]

Having been devoid of prisoners for nearly half a century, Robben Island accepted the first of its next batch of prisoners in 1961. It was used as a maximum-security prison for both ordinary criminals and political prisoners under the apartheid government which had come into power in 1948 and relinquished its hold on the country in 1994. Only black men were incarcerated on the Island. The first wave of political prisoners was sent to the Island in 1962, and the last ones were transferred from the Island in 1991. The last ordinary prisoners left the Island on the prison’s closure in 1996. The Island’s isolation and the cruelty of its prison staff made it the most dreaded prison in the country. While conditions improved during the course of the 1970s and 1980s, it remained the most inhospitable outpost of apartheid. [11]

This period of the Island’s history is not only the most vivid in current public memory, the best represented in material and oral archives, but it is also the period most easily contrasted to the events in South Africa after 1994. It is in this period that we can see most clearly how the Island symbolises the triumph of the human spirit over oppression and adversity. Five, ten, or even twenty years before the first democratic election in 1994, many of South Africa’s political leadership, mostly members of the ruling African National Congress and the smaller but vibrant Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), were imprisoned on Robben Island. Ironically, their very incarceration in an apartheid prison protected them from security force assassinations, because the apartheid government feared the adverse publicity that would result from deaths of their high-profile opponents in prison. [12]

Today, many of these former prisoners are political leaders in the new democratic government. The life stories of the Robben Island prisoners, who helped to lead South Africa into democracy, symbolise the broader movement towards a culture of human rights in the country. Many Robben Islanders suffered physically and mentally from the harsh conditions of prison life and isolation from their families and friends. But while imprisonment brought frustration and difficulty, it also offered prisoners the chance to challenge prison restrictions, to share and debate political dreams and differences with each other across political and generational boundaries. Freedom provided the opportunity to apply the political and humanitarian principles, hard-fought and finely honed on Robben Island, in the broader national arena. In these ways, Robben Island acted as the crucible of the moral and political cornerstones of the new South Africa. [13]

Notes

[1] Mabule Dorah Riah, 2018. "Who Cares What We Speak: A Case Study at Kgoši Mampuru Correctional Facility," European Review of Applied Sociology, Sciendo, vol. 11(16), pages 6-16, June. ↵

[2] Mabule Dorah Riah, 2018. "Who Cares What We Speak: A Case Study at Kgoši Mampuru Correctional Facility," European Review of Applied Sociology, Sciendo, vol. 11(16), pages 6-16, June. ↵

[3] Mabule Dorah Riah, 2018. "Who Cares What We Speak: A Case Study at Kgoši Mampuru Correctional Facility," European Review of Applied Sociology, Sciendo, vol. 11(16), pages 6-16, June. ↵

[4] Jenkin T., 1987 "Escape from Pretoria" London, Kliptown Books, pg 69 ↵

[5] Jenkin T., 1987 "Escape from Pretoria" London, Kliptown Books, pg 69 ↵

[6] Jenkin T., 1987 "Escape from Pretoria" London, Kliptown Books, pg 69 ↵

[7] Author Unknown, "Youth on death row" South African History Archive, (Accessed: 19 October 2020) Available at: http://www.saha.org.za/youth/political_prisoners.htm ↵

[8] Author Unknown, "South Africa’s gallows now instrument of healing" Brand South Africa.com, (Online: 1 March 2012) (Accessed: 19 October 2020) Available at: https://www.brandsouthafrica.com/people-culture/people/gallows-010312 ↵

[9] M. Mac," Jacob Zuma to honour 134 hanged political prisoners" (Online: 14 December 2011) Available at https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/jacob-zuma-to-honour-134-hanged-political-prisoner, (Accessed 19 October 2020) ↵

[10] WHC Nomination Documentation, Available at https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/916.pdf pg, 16 (Accessed 19 October 2020) ↵

[11] WHC Nomination Documentation, Available at https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/916.pdf pg, 26 (Accessed 19 October 2020) ↵

[12] WHC Nomination Documentation, Available at https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/916.pdf pg, 26 (Accessed 19 October 2020) ↵

[13] WHC Nomination Documentation, Available at https://whc.unesco.org/uploads/nominations/916.pdf pg, 27 (Accessed 19 October 2020) ↵