Series: Prominent Human Rights Activist Calls On Zimbabwe To Urgently Improve Prison Conditions

"There are really no mechanisms of support for women in prisons - even those with children."

Behind bars and confined in "outdated and crammed" cells - prisoners in Zimbabwe - both young and old - are locked up without sufficient water supply, medical or sanitary facilities.

Zimbabwe‘s prisons currently hold about 20,000 inmates but have a capacity of only 17,000 - leading to serious congestion.

One such example are the cells at the infamous Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison. They’re designed to hold just 16 people but during the pandemic they were reported to be ‘housing’ more than 40 each.

But the country's inmate crisis started long before the coronavirus pandemic with allegations of prisoners being given just one meal a day stemming back to the early 2000s.

The pandemic, however, further exacerbated the problems prisoners were facing and eventually President Emmerson Mnangagwa took action.

In a bid to reduce congestion in cells across the country to combat the spread of the deadly disease - he released more than 4,000 minor offence criminals.

The move to let prisoners walk free, including those from Chikurubi Female Prison in Harare, the capital, came amid growing allegations that the government was not taking the pandemic serious enough.

But despite the release of some prisoners, Dewa Mavhinga, Southern Africa Director with the Africa Division at Human Rights Watch, says so much more needs to be done in order to "correct the wrongs."

For years, the southern nation has grappled with severely strained prisons that organisations including Humans Right Watch have slammed for their unsafe conditions.

And a recent report published last year found that 'several dozen children younger than age four living with their incarcerated mothers shared their mothers’ food allocation, rather than receiving their own.'

It also noted that prisoners with mental health issues were often held together with regular prisoners until a doctor was available to make an assessment.

But psychiatric sections were available only at some prisons and even then - they offered little specialised care.

Mr Mavhinga told AWP Magazine: "Generally, Zimbabwe has very old prisons, most of them were constructed before independence under colonial government of British colonial rule and because of that the infrastructure is outdated. The capacity in terms of inmates is consistently been outstripped. So there has been a consistent challenge over the years - before the pandemic - of overcrowding in prisons.

"Not only that, because of the challenges around infrastructure, most of the facilities are not up to date including that they use a serious lack of water for sanitation for, for inmates ablution, or sanitary facilities.

"And so, you'd find that this was the situation before the COVID 19 pandemic and there have been a number of investigations, including the regional human rights bodies that found that places of detention and most prisons were not fit for human habitation...But not much was done on the issues that were raised."

Back in 2015 - an investigation by Michelle Chifamba in Harare found that pregnant inmates had complained of their treatment.

Tsitsi Mhandh, who was two months pregnant when she was locked up for possession of stolen goods, claimed the seven months she spent in prison were the “worst.”

”We had no regular medical check-ups. We were treated like ordinary female inmates and then there was the abuse. They (even) called us names.”

Elizabeth Mapakame also shared the same notion and reported that there were no post natal care opportunities.

Mr Mavhinga, who has long used his work at the organisation to address the country's issues, said some of the same problems experienced by the woman are still taking place.

“There are really no mechanisms of support for women in prisons - even those with children. The truth is detained women and prisoners in general are left to fend for themselves whether that's for food, medical supplies or water."

He added that there is a "focus of securing a conviction or even taking away the presumption of innocence and treating everyone who is detained as a convicted prisoner who is serving a sentence even though they are in pretrial detention."

Data surrounding the number of people in Zimbabwean prisons has been described by some campaigners as unreliable. But recent figures from the World Prison Brief shows that in 2019 there were more female prisoners (458) than in 2015 (391).

Pre-trial detentions

Pre-trial detentions are partly to blame for the congested cells along with the "abhorrent" and frequent arrests for petty crimes.

One such example is the case of Wendy Tafirenyika, a woman based in Zimbabwe, who is allegedly serving five years in Chinhoyi Prison because she did not have a receipt for a packet of 4 tissue rolls.

She was arrested during the home raids following the 2019 fuel protests, but did not have a lawyer, according to tweets made by 'Team Pachedu'.

The social media account, dedicated to "patriotic Zimbabwean citizens who strive to promulgate the culture of transparency" pleaded the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights for guidance.

Wendy's case is not an anomoly and it's not unsual for people to spend weeks - months even - in remand detention.

Alan Moyo, a 23-year-old Zimbabwean student activist was released on bail earlier in March after spending 74 days in remand detention.

He was released on ZW$10,000 bail - a sum that many in the country cannot afford.

Moyo was initially arrested on 7 December 2020 on charges of inciting public violence and for allegedly participating in the organization of the 31 July 2020 anti-corruption peaceful protests.

"There is excessive use of arbitrary arrests and detention - pretrial detention. So you will find that prisons are decongested because they're detaining people who could otherwise be going to court from home but in Zimbabwe, there is a high resort to detention of people who are not prisoners, who are presumed innocent and who have not been tried.

"So pre-trial detention in Zimbabwe is pretty high and the numbers will be as high as 33% of the entire prison population. Those people will have not been found guilty of any crime, but they're simply there because they are awaiting trial.

“So that's a big area where the authorities have failed to address because I think sometimes denial of bail and pretrial detention is used as a way of punishing critical government human rights activist, opposition political activists and others.

"So this is why you find that is widely used when it should not be happening."

This is part of an AWP Series looking into the conditions of prisons across different countries and the impacts on rehabilitation and the wider society.