editorial comment
The mayor of Harare, Jacob Mafume, who is in prison, held on pre-trial remand for a corruption case, was yesterday reported to have contracted Covid-19.
Given the deadly nature of the virus and the rate at which it is killing people around the country, it is a dreadful, yet correct observation that Mafume’s life is in danger.
Decisions on the detention of suspects are the sole prerogative of judges and magistrates and there is no question about that. However, the arrival of Covid-19, particularly the obtaining second phase, accompanied by the new and more potent variant from South Africa, should move our justice system towards reconsideration.
Zimbabwe’s detention facilities are fertile ground for the spreading of diseases and Covid-19 thrives in such overcrowded and unsanitary conditions.
No one’s life is less important than the other, but authorities need to be seen to be doing something, not to endanger the lives of thousands of suspects that remain stuck in filthy and congested detention facilities. Our justice system should reconsider parameters employed in determining remand cases.
Many suspects are today arbitrarily detained in life-threatening facilities on harmless political charges – an act that in today’s situation is tantamount to death sentence.
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Convicted criminals have a right to life too and should not be deliberately set to die under the conditions in our prisons today.
There is need to decongest and sanitise detention facilities as a matter of urgency. If there is an outcry of a Covid-19 outbreak outside prison, one can only imagine the bomb that is waiting to explode in detention facilities.
The government is struggling to provide personal protective equipment to hospitals and schools. What is the situation with face masks in prisons?
The government should, without further delay, start moves to decongest prisons. Our justice system should consider more police fines in lieu of arrests.
In response to the Covid pandemic the legislature should quickly come up with laws that will keep vulnerable individuals out of prisons. The elderly and people with underlying conditions that put them at high risk of severe complications and mortality due to Covid-19 should not be locked up.
It would also be useful to consider for release from detention people that are in prison for non-violent political cases, those that have already served the majority of their sentences and those that remain detained because they could not raise bail money.
Meanwhile, efforts should be made to expand Covid-19 testing in prisons and to enhance cleaning protocols and general hygiene. These efforts will definitely quell growing infection cases and deaths, but they can only bear fruit in decongested facilities.
Our detention facilities are a disaster waiting to happen and it will be foolhardy to pretend as if all is normal when every day we are waking up to dreadful Covid-19 statistics.
