Telling the stories of today’s “Aids kaffirs”
Fifteen Westville Prison inmates won a fighting chance against HIV/AIDS when Judge Thumba Pillay ordered the prison on 22 June to provide them and all qualifying prisoners with antiretroviral treatment. It is a victory they have yet to enjoy. This ongoing story brings back memories of the Mail&Guardian’s 1994 report about how HIV-positive prisoners were thought of as “Aids kaffirs” by their captors and others.
The 15 had lodged an urgent appeal with the Durban High Court in May. Pillay was asked to order the prison to stop delaying them access to ARV treatment. The inmates’ victory is being dampened by the Correctional Service Department’s determination to revoke the order on the grounds that it does not have the facilities to implement it, Business Day reported:
“Meanwhile, the department said its appeal was not out of lack of care about the health of its inmates, but an effort to establish comprehensive treatment and care plan that would cover most prisons.”
On July 25, Pillay granted leave to appeal to the Natal Provincial Division against the order, rather than to the Supreme Court of Appeal, to the six respondents – the government, the head of Westville correctional centre, the minister and area commissioner of correctional services, and the minister and KwaZulu-Natal provincial minister for health. However, the judge also said that his original order for immediate treatment to all qualifying prisoners should be implemented pending the outcome of the appeal.
“For the applicants it is a matter of life and death. For the respondents it involves no more than the conduct of an exercise and thereafter setting out in affidavit form how it intends to carry out its obligation in terms of its operational plan and guidelines, [with] which the respondents have consistently maintained they are already complying.”
A round of applause for the judge, please! According to the AIDS Law Project (ALP), which is representing the inmates, about 110 inmates died of HIV/AIDS-related illnesses at the prison last year. While the department of correctional services is busy filing leave for appeal against a very sensible ruling, the inmates are getting sicker by the day. Who wants to bet they will want to appeal against this new ruling, too? In the Daily News, ALP lawyer Wim Trengove, said that 50 inmates in the prison’s Medium B facility alone had a CD4 cell count below 200.
Although perhaps there are many who feel that prisoners do not deserve the best of our society, because they are essentially criminals, there is a reason South Africa doesn’t have the death penalty and the Constitution clearly states that prisoners should be provided with adequate health care. What the prison authorities are doing is tantamount to sentencing these inmates to death.
When HIV/AIDS was a relatively new disease to people, and the stigma attached to it very strong, prisoners were one of the groups that felt the sting. This is evident in this 1994 report by the Mail&GuardianOnline, “The Aids Kaffirs of Johannesburg Prison.”
“Johannesburg Prison inmates who have tested HIV-positive are stigmatised, abused and denied rights granted to other prisoners, they told Philippa Garson “It’s like you’re a snake that someone caught,” says ‘Ben’, “a snake that everyone comes to look at.” He’s struggling to find the right words to describe what it feels like to be HIV-positive in Johannesburg Prison. He begins to sob as he tells how he no longer has a name, no longer has rights. “My name is HIV or Aids kaffir.”
It seems that the discrimination that prisoners suffered then has just taken a different turn. But it is comforting to realise that the media has not relegated prisoners with HIV/AIDS to the back pages. Their stories are still being told and their battles, just as challenging, are still being fought.- Akhona Cira.