The December 4 prison riot at East London’s maximum security prison, where three communal cells housing 143 prisoners were torched and authorities used tear gas to contain the riot, was started by 17 inmates recently transferred from Port Elizabeth’s St Alban’s Maximum Prison.
Deputy correctional services minister Thabang Makwetla and head of the prison Johannes Botes revealed this to the Daily Dispatch during a media briefing following the deputy minister’s inspection of the partially gutted facility on Saturday.
Makwetla said the inmates had been transferred as a result of a plan by his ministry to transfer prisoners from extremely overcrowded prisons to less congested facilities in line with Western Cape High Court judge Vincent Saldanha’s 2016 landmark ruling.
Saldanha ruled that overcrowding at Pollsmoor maximum security prison in Cape Town was unconstitutional and ordered the correctional services department to maintain prison levels at no more than 120% of their approved capacity in a case that set a precedent and had to be addressed throughout all prisons.
As a result of last week’s fire at the West Bank prison, five inmates were treated in hospital for smoke inhalation after inmates burnt 94 mattresses and blankets and threw them into the corridors outside the cells.
The incident happened at 9pm last Tuesday. The turmoil erupted after prisoners submitted a memorandum of demands on November 9 over what they claim were inhumane living conditions. The South African Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights accused the prison authorities of turning the memo into “toilet paper”.
A well-placed source said the 17 were instrumental in a fatal riot at St Alban’s prison in 2016 where three inmates were killed and five guards injured in a fight between prisoners and guards. The chaotic scenes played out at the Nelson Mandela Bay prison on Boxing Day two years ago.
A total of 26 people, including five guards, were treated at hospitals after suffering injuries.
Makwetla explained: “The moving of the population within our centres arises from the need to control overcrowding stemming from Cape High Court judge Saldanha’s [ruling]. [As a result] our centres are somewhat in a state of flux because you have [prisoners] who have different experiences in centres…wanting to impose their experiences in their new homes.”
At the inspection, Botes told Makwetla that the cells had been burnt beyond the point of housing inmates.
He said the West Bank prison had a total of 1,532 offenders housed in nine units...