The tour [part 1] - Number Four

Ok, as promised...

I went and did it.

There're six main sections to the Constitution Hill.
Namely:

• Constitution Square,
• Old Fort,
• Women's Jail,
• Constitutional Court,
• Great African Steps, and
• Number Four.

So I went and explored Number Four today.

Number four was basically a prison where political prisoners and other "criminals" (I put that in inverted commas because most of them were arrested for refusing to carry their passbooks and marching - like Mahatma Ghandi for instance.)

Prisoners where treated in extremely inhumane ways, where they were severely punished and beaten for meaningless things (at times a 1 prisoner would be beaten by all the wardens in the prison). They were subjected to strip searches. The Black prisoners were strip searched by Black warders. They were made to do degrading things like open their rectums so the warders could see if they had smuggled anything in. Notoriously known as the Tauza dance.

While there were some white prisoners as well. They were treated like royalty. They never ate the same food more than 2 days in a row (unlike Black prisoners), they had a menu from which to choose what they wanted to eat; they were given pillows, pillow cases, bedspreads, a slim mattress, 3 blankets, etc. Basically anything they needed to make their stay as comfortable as possible. Whereas the black people were only given 3 blankets. That's it. 3 blankets.

Anyway...

As I continue on my pursuit of education; I've seen how the old system was treating our black brethren. And it sickens me that today's prisoners demand they have DSTv installed in their cells. WHAT THE FUCK FOR? I don't even have DSTv! I work 40hrs a week, and I still don't have it. It's bad enough that I have money deducted from my salary every month to pay for your daily meals, now you wanna take that money and pay up your DSTv subscription? WHY?
Even the fact that they have TVs to begin with pisses me the fuck off. They're there to be punished for the wrongs they have inflicted upon society.
The Black prisoners at Number Four had done nothing wrong. Most of what they did was deemed illegal because of the fucked up apartheid system. Sucks that the youth of today wanna use prison as some sort of recreational center instead of what it was meant to be... an institution put in place to rehabilitate them. And yet most up-and-coming criminals aspire to be sent to prison because they'll at least get to watch TV and get some drugs while they're at it.

Shit is fucked up!

article: DSTV in jail