By KENIUS MUTAURWA AND DR MASIMBA MAVAZA

An Open Letter to Job Sikhala at Chikurubi Maximum Prison

A few years back, there was a popular song titled, ‘Jobho Kwenya Kwenya’ and many versions of this entertaining song are available on Youtube. The song relates to the biblical Job and those who sung it were concerned for his health. This past week our local, ‘Jobho’, Job Sikhala has written an open letter from our maximum prison and among other things, he decried his health. Unsurprisingly, his lawyers have bought his story and equally his sympathizers at home and abroad have wept for him. However, in this open letter, I will argue that Job, you have shot yourself in the foot and equally the Western world and its hangers on have been shortsighted at the effects of their nefarious activities. I will conclude that there is a nexus between your antics and the haggardness of your fellow inmates. I also encourage your inmates to have serious conversations with you as you are the author of their plight. The enemy is within their midst.
As a precursor to my opinion, perhaps it is best to highlight that a prison as defined by the Oxford dictionary is ‘a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed or while awaiting trial’. It is therefore important to point out that it is the courts that upon being presented by facts have deemed your residence, Jobho, at the maximum prison as ideal in the circumstances. The legal reasons you are inside has been debated extensively and it is not the focus of this article.
I would like to highlight your concerns in relations to your health. A person’s health consists of both her physical and mental health. Job, you complained that the conditions at Chikurubi are grim, with inmates dying of COVID-19 and consequently you demanded to be moved from that prison as you fear for your person. You also seem to be mentally alarmed to be housed in the D section with murders. The litany of your complaints extended to the quality of food served and you sought to have your relatives bring you nice food.
The Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights (ZLHR) have also condemned the diet as, ‘not suitable’ and the prison conditions as, ‘deplorable’. We know this lot has never said anything positive about the government but I have not lost sight that there are some white persons with Rhodesian ancestry within it causing noise. The fugitive from justice and self-exiled Walter Mzembi and Nelson Chamisa, a former president of the opposition party MDC, weighed in by advising you, Jobho, not to drink the water or eat the prison food as from their opinion, you will be poisoned like many before you.
It must be pointed that Chamisa has of late been increasingly hallucinating and without a shred of evidence been suggesting that certain people were poisoned by the state. I do not wish to go into his wild accusations today, but certainly, he is not a medical doctor. I am going to deconstruct him in my next opinion. I now turn to the history of our prison system.
The Rhodesia Prison Service (RPS) was a subdivision of the Rhodesian Security Forces and it was responsible for the administration of the Rhodesian prison system. It was established in 1954 as the Southern Rhodesia Prison Department and incorporated into the federal prison service of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, it continued as the prison service of independent Rhodesia during the Unilateral Declaration of Independence period. Upon Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, it was dissolved and superseded by the Zimbabwe Prison Services.
Zimbabwe has 46 prisons and collectively they were built to house 14 000 prisoners but currently hold more than 20 000. Chikurubi’s male section houses 2508 inmates instead of the 1360 it was designed to hold. It is imported to note that you, Job, has steadfastly argued that your incarceration is politically motivated and it is essential then to allude to the Rhodesian era’s treatment of such prisoners.
The conditions of Zimbabwe’s prisons were researched by Jocelyn Alexander who is at the University of Oxford. She argued that since the late 1990s, deaths occasioned by diseases and hunger had increased, fuelled by economic decline, political instability and government corruption. Needless to say, her research article was published in 2009, and it took her 10 years to sparsely relate to the prison system in the Rhodesian era. Regarding the Rhodesian era, she wrote in 2019 that, ‘punishments included petty deprivations, violent beatings, pouring cold water in cells at night, ‘spare diets’ and solitary confinement, the latter – known as the ‘dark cell’ – was held up as the most awful of fates’.
There is limited research about the Rhodesian prison era and this does not surprise me at all as we know the Western world command what constitute research. This brings me to remind the reader of my previous article in which I decried the discourses of silence excised by the White man. When a situation does not profit a White man, she will not blow a trumpet.
However, an insight of political prisoners’ situation in the Rhodesian era was provided by Dr Munochveyi whose thesis detailed the experiences of political prisoners. For the avoidance of muddling his succinct thesis, I would like to quote him in his description of Khami prison which was known to be the hardest prison then. He wrote that,
‘the cells at Khami were bare, and apart from a sleeping mat, prisoners had three blankets and a toilet bucket. Prison warders let out prisoners for only five minutes in the morning, during which time they were supposed to empty the toilet buckets, have a cold shower and use the flush toilets. No towels were provided so that prisoners had to dress and return to their cells after a shower while wet. Breakfast of sugarless porridge was served in the area outside the cells but was taken back to the cells to be eaten. Usually, the same plates were reused, unwashed, several times by different prisoners. Physical exercise was limited to hard labour’.
The point I am raising here is that the phenomenon you are facing Jobho is not new, it is only that the ZLHR will not want people to know about this. The bucket of human waste in cells is not new, Jobho. Perhaps David Coltart would love to tell the nation of the Rhodesian prison conditions and hopefully he will tell us that he raised concerns about that. I am not arguing that you should face the same conditions as we took the war to the invaders to improve our well-being within and outside prison. The late Maurice Nyagumbo gave a horrific account of his incarceration during the Rhodesian era in his celebrated autobiography. However, Job, I would like to tell you the following.
The increased population in prisons is hardly surprising. The invaders during their reign made it very difficult for the Black people whom they had consigned to the Tribal Trust Lands to come to the cities. This is well known from research that this White man’s system kept the cities and towns’ populations low, but now, everyone is free to move and it should not surprise you, Job to meet many fellow criminals at Chikurubi. I suppose you will argue that the government should build more prisons for your comfort but I hasten to curtail your warped thoughts.
It is well documented that you, your friends including the infamous, water mouth Tendai Biti have for decades been calling for sanctions to cripple the country so that you would rule. Indeed, the Western world has agreed with you and our dear country has been tottering for decades. You want to be transferred to a prison where there is no COVID-19. So, tell me, Jobho, with a crippled economy which you helped to injure, where do we get the finance to build a prison that would satisfy your Western friends?

You claim that the prison diet is horrible and indeed, Job, we know you have a penchant for tasty food which caused you to find it a struggle to fit into your three-piece suit. Do you remember doing promotional work for Mambos in return for pieces of chicken under the #WIWANTYouToBeFull and #EatLikeAKing. I laughed my lungs out as in your recent video while in hiding, declined to eat peanut butter and bread and chose instead to eat rice. You told your benefactor to take the former food back! Invariably, Jobho, you must have been missing the spicy chicken, but however, the prison system that you helped to cripple cannot provide such lavish dishes. I understand you will be getting these meals delivered to the prison but let us take a step back and think about your inmates.

Do they know that you are part of the evil, Western world system that is causing them the hardships in prison? What do you think they think when they see you struggling to fit into your prison garb and also seeing you tucking in into the spice chicken from Mambos or Nandoes while they look haggard? If your inmates have not thought that the enemy is within, they should start asking your tough questions and hopefully, you will understand and starts singing a new tune. The lesson for you and your foolish friends, is, do not be narrow minded, see the bigger picture, Jobho. Feel the effects of the sanctions, Jobho. –