Hidden Cruelties: Prison Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa

Hidden Cruelties: Prison Conditions in Sub-Saharan Africa
A juvenile detainee stares out the window at the Naguru Remand Home, Kampala, Uganda, Nov. 13, 2006 (photo by Flickr user Endre Vestvik, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license).

Last year, during a midnight search for contraband in South Africa’s St. Albans maximum security prison, more than 200 inmates were forced to lie naked on the ground in a human chain, each one’s face pressed into his neighbors’ buttocks. They were then subjected to beatings, electric shocks and torture.

The abuse was not an isolated case. According to a complaint lodged by former inmate Bradley McCallum with the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC), a similar incident occurred at St. Albans in 2005 after the stabbing of a prison warden. In his complaint, McCallum alleged that inmates were forced to lie naked in a human chain, then sprayed with water, bitten by dogs and beaten by guards with batons and pickaxe handles. He described how he himself was shocked, beaten and raped with a baton. As a result of the shock and fear, he said, inmates urinated and defecated on themselves and one another.

After ignoring five requests by the UNHRC to respond to McCallum’s allegations, South Africa was found guilty of human rights violations in 2010, but last year’s incident shows how little has changed since. This is sobering, given that post-apartheid South Africa has one of the most progressive constitutions in the world.

Keep reading for free!

Get instant access to the rest of this article by submitting your email address below. You'll also get access to three articles of your choice each month and our free newsletter:

Or, Subscribe now to get full access.

Already a subscriber? Log in here .

What you’ll get with an All-Access subscription to World Politics Review:

A WPR subscription is like no other resource — it’s like having a personal curator and expert analyst of global affairs news. Subscribe now, and you’ll get:

  • Immediate and instant access to the full searchable library of tens of thousands of articles.
  • Daily articles with original analysis, written by leading topic experts, delivered to you every weekday.
  • Regular in-depth articles with deep dives into important issues and countries.
  • The Daily Review email, with our take on the day’s most important news, the latest WPR analysis, what’s on our radar, and more.
  • The Weekly Review email, with quick summaries of the week’s most important coverage, and what’s to come.
  • Completely ad-free reading.

And all of this is available to you when you subscribe today.

More World Politics Review