Double StandardsSeptember 27, 2012Produced by Adel van Niekerk
On Special Assignment this week we take you into the heart of Johannesburg prison’s B-section and expose the facility’s seeming failure to care for its sick inmates. Known notoriously as “Sun City” because of its poor conditions, we turn the spotlight on one of the prison’s inmates, Tshepo who is cancer-ridden and is facing death in a single cell. We bring you shocking footage of his daily struggle to survive.
Tshepo has stage 4 cancer. It was diagnosed too late, as is usually the case with sick inmates. His greatest concern is how to keep the septic cancerous growths on his upper thigh clean. When the stench from the lesions had become almost unbearable, Tshepo pleaded to be moved from an overcrowded cell to the prison’s hospital. But prison authorities refused, citing his ‘weak immune system’ as reason. Instead of this Tshepo was moved to a single cell where a broken toilet spews sewerage onto the floor. Chained to a wheelchair, Tshepo has to try and keep his cell clean while frantically treating his septic growths in these unsterile conditions with dressings and disinfectant ointment that he has to barter for with other inmates. In March this year a new medical parole law kicked into gear and the Ministry of Correctional Services appointed a new 10-member medical parole advisory panel. Tshepo’s application under this new law has failed twice. In July this year, under this same piece of legislation, former police commissioner Jackie Selebi became one of the first successful applicants. At the beginning of the year Special Assignment highlighted seeming disparities under the controversial medical parole system. More than six months later and under a new law it seems little has changed. What will happen to the hundreds of unknown ailing inmates like Tshepo who believe the medical parole system is based on double standards?
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