TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 7

Subsection 4

■ THE HEARING

The link between prisons and apartheid

22 From the early 1960s, with the introduction of detention without trial under the various versions of the General Law Amendment Act, prisons became an essential part of the apartheid system of control. The incarceration of political opponents became "a significant permanent feature" and by 1976, legislated power effectively meant the “criminalisation of most forms of opposition to the apartheid state”. Prisons, therefore, became a “major weapon against political dissent” and the threat of being imprisoned became an essential part of apartheid’s ‘armoury’⁶ .

23 In another sense, the realities of life in prison for both common law and political inmates became a mirror of the society outside. As an exiled writer in London, Allen Cook, wrote in 1974:

The appalling fact of apartheid is that a society has been created whereby, for the blacks, the conditions of ordinary life are comparable to those of imprisonment, in terms of conditions normally held to constitute imprisonment: forcible separation from families, controlled living in security institutions behind barbed wire, and supervision by persons with wide powers to command and punish.⁷

24 The irony is that, towards the end of the period under review, having been in prison for political reasons became a badge of distinction, most obviously symbolised in the figure of Nelson Mandela. This might explain why so few former political prisoners, who include a large number of current government and political leaders, approached the Commission to give testimony about their experiences. Indeed, when it was suggested to some of these leaders that they should testify at the prisons hearing, they declined — either because they regarded their sufferings in prison as a necessary contribution to the struggle against apartheid or because they felt that their experiences were insignificant when compared to those of others.

Racial segregation

25 For most of the period covered by the Commission’s mandate, racial segregation was applied at all levels in all prisons. This was evident in the physical separation between black prisoners on Robben Island and white prisoners in Pretoria and in such day-to-day matters as clothing, food and the apportioning of privileges.

26 This practice was especially detrimental to black prisoners, as related by Mr Andrew Masondo, who described conditions on Robben Island:

The mere fact that you were black meant your clothing was different, as if the weather treated you differently. Your food was different, as if you became hungry in a different way. The food was a problem because you were with comrades – in fact, I think it was even more painful for people like Kathy [Kathrada] and Laloo [Chiba] who could actually eat bread. Even the amount of sugar in your porridge was different: the blacks got a teaspoon, the others two.

Special treatment of political prisoners

27 The classification system, which determined ‘privileges’, was deliberately used as a weapon against political prisoners. Thus, Andrew Masondo reported:

If you were arrested for murder or any other crime and it was your first offence, you’d be put into B group and that gave you a lot of privileges. But if you were a political prisoner, you would be put into D group. Being in D group meant at the time you could only get one letter in six months, one visit of thirty minutes in six months … I never reached A group.

28 Similarly, political prisoners were, until the late 1980s, denied any amnesty or remission of sentence. Indeed, prison authorities claimed that there were no political prisoners in South Africa, which was clearly untrue. However, improvements came slowly, mainly in the late 1980s and usually after campaigns inside and outside the prisons, such as those following the Strachan case (see below).

29 Former prisoners at the hearing paid particular tribute to the contributions of Helen Suzman (MP) and the regular visits to political prisoners by the International Committee of the Red Cross. These visits were, however, restricted to sentenced prisoners whose conditions did, in general, begin to improve in later years, while those of detainees probably worsened between 1960 and 1990.

30 Political prisoners were consistently treated with unusual cruelty, as when Bram Fischer’s son died. Fischer’s daughter, Ilse Wilson, described what happened:

The most difficult part of Paul’s death was that his brother Gustav came from Bloemfontein to tell Bram that Paul had died, and Bram was called late one afternoon for this unexpected visit, and he was told about it. He was not allowed into a private room to talk with his brother. They had to talk to each other through the partitions, with the warders on either side of them. By the time the visit was over, it was lock-up time and Bram went back on his own to his cell and was locked up on his own. For fourteen hours after the news of his son’s death, he was left on his own.