Ex-convict speaks of 'Spill-Die'

DIRANG LEKUNTWANE
Correspondent | Friday December 17, 2010 00:00

 

The mere mention of it sends shivers down the spine of inmates as this is payback time for the warders, who use it to punish obstinate and hard-to-deal with criminals.

'Spill-Die' room or Slaughter room is a small cubicle with just enough space to fit one man standing and is only known to prison inmates and officers.

Those who know of it do so by chance or association. When inside you cannot sit, squat or lie down. It has an opening above the head that is the size of a window.

This room is mainly used to punish prisoners who are deemed uncooperative and hard nuts to crack.

The maximum legal period to stay there on detention is 48 hours but prison warders may choose otherwise and keep you longer than that. Before being confined in that room, you need to be checked by a government doctor lest you complicate the purpose of the 'Spill Die'. The other requirement, it has been alleged, is to be stripped naked. One such 'Spill-Die' room is within the premises of Mahalapye Prison, one of the country's biggest prisons, claims an ex-convict.

'These guys (prison warders) do not care. They are reckless. The funny thing is that they once kept me there without taking me to a doctor to check my health status. They did not care whether I would survive or die in there,' exclaimed Kgethisa Motlhakwane, the ex-convict.

In an interview with Mmegi, 34-year-old Motlhakwane said although he has been in and out of the Mahalapye Prison serving various sentences, the 'Spill Die' was his worst jail experience. And it is the same 'Spill Die' that makes him pray that he does not fall on the wrong side of the law again.

'Some prisoners come out unconscious until they recover in the prison clinic. They don't take you to the main hospital because you can create problems for them. Even at the clinic they don't give you any medicine, they want to see if you are alive. These guys (prison warders) are bad,' he alleges.

'When you are inside this prison (Mahalapye), its like you are in Rwanda,' he said with a serious face.

Motlhakwane compares the Mahalapye Prison to the situation in Rwanda because once you enter the gates your freedom is lost.

'There is lack of medical resources, they don't even have a doctor inside which puts the lives of prisoners at risk. 'Those who fall unconscious or are burnt in the 'Spill Die' have nobody to attend to them. They cannot even assist us with our appeals that is why they can end up keeping you longer than expected when the time you have been given by the courts elapses. Prisoners there are at risk of catching infectious diseases because they are overcrowded. You will be lucky to come out of it alive,' he alleges.

According to the ex-convict who has twice served 10-year sentences for robbery crimes, on average, about three prisoners die annually at Mahalapye Prison, a situation he associated with lack of health resources.

'At times you die because they have no medicine or as a result of punishment because you are stubborn and hard to deal with. Just imagine?

They can put you in the 'Spill Die' because a warder does not see eye to eye with you. See?' he said.

Motlhakwane said he first landed in prison at the age of 20, in 1996, when he was convicted and given a 10-year jail term for robbery. When he was released it did not take him long to mix with the wrong company and this landed him on the wrong side of the law again. In December 2004, two days before Christmas, he was put behind bars after being convicted and sentenced to another 10 years for robbery.

'I served the wrong conviction. I tried to appeal because I was charged for stealing from a dwelling house but the conviction was based on robbery,' he charged, as he showed us documents of his appeal case. The documents read, 'On the 5th of December 2008 I dismissed both the appeal against conviction and appeal against sentence. He has come before this court on the same issues he had raised before at the hearing of appeal. I am satisfied that the applicant was properly convicted by the magistrate,' said the statement, that pinned him down further.

However, Motlhakwane still maintains that he was wrongly charged and served a conviction he did not deserve.

A social worker interviewed said that it is a pity that ex-convicts are not given the right counselling in order to prepare them for the outside world once they are released from prison.

'Prisoners need to be assisted with life skills that will prepare them for life after jail. They need psychological support because they might experience hallucinations of ill treatment in prisons like he claims,' she advised. She however noted that society as a whole should help ex-prisoners adapt better.

Motlhakwane says that he now wants to live life the straight way and strengthen his relationship with his two children, who will doing Form 5 and 3 next year. His advise to people to all those playing the criminal games is: 'Do not commit crime, because inside the prison gates there is no life.'