TRC Final Report

Volume 4

Chapter 7

Subsection 7

Solitary confinement

42 Another remarkable feature of the hearing was the testimony describing the effects of solitary confinement and calling for its abolition. Solitary confinement was used by the former state for two reasons: to bring about the psychological breakdown of political detainees, and as a form of punishment and control of sentenced prisoners. The testimonies were consistent in highlighting such treatment as punitive, cruel and inhumane.

43 Ms Zahrah Narkedien described the effects of her isolation:

I had to go down and live in the basement in isolation for seven months. That was very, very painful. I don’t even want to describe psychologically what I had to do to survive down there. I will write it one day, but I could never tell you. But it did teach me something, and that is that no human being can live alone for more than, I think, even one month ... because there’s nothing you can do to survive by yourself every single day.

The basement was an entire wing of the prison … I felt, as the months went by, that I was going deeper and deeper into the ground. Physically I wasn’t, but psychologically I was ... I became so psychologically damaged that I used to feel that all these cells are like coffins, and there were all dead people in there … It was as if I was alive and all these people were dead. I was so disturbed but I would never, never let the wardresses know ... But they did destroy me....

My suggestion is that no prisoner, regardless of their crimes, should ever be in isolation per se – not even this section 29 business for two weeks. I know it serves a purpose but, ultimately, when it’s prolonged, I don’t think anybody can handle it.

I’ve been out of prison now for more than seven or ten years, but I haven’t recovered and I will never recover. I know I won’t. I have tried to. The first two years after my release, I tried to be normal again and the more I struggled to be normal, the more disturbed I became. I had to accept that I was damaged. A part of my soul was eaten away as if by maggots, horrible as it sounds, and I will never get it back again.

44 Asked if she felt solitary confinement could be defined as ‘severe ill treatment’, Ms Jean Middleton said:

The prison authorities themselves know it’s ill treatment, that’s why they use it as a punishment. People found guilty of prison offences are kept in isolation. It is a punishment. I can’t describe its effects on you very well, because you do go slightly crazy, and it’s very difficult to describe your own craziness … Colonel Fred van Niekerk of the Special Branch once told a court that prisoners started showing evidence of disorientation within three days.

45 Mr Murthie Naidoo had this to say:

After making a statement, I was taken back to my cell where I was kept in solitary for four months under the 180-day law. I must confess that solitary confinement is the worst kind of torture that can be inflicted on a human being. No amount of physical torture can equal that of solitary confinement. I had absolutely no contact with any of the other prisoners who were almost entirely common law prisoners, but I could continually hear the beating and sjambokking [whipping] of other prisoners.

46 Mr Harold Strachan described how he was permanently affected:

I got put into solitary confinement for eleven months straight. And that cell ... it was as big as four squares on the floor here, and I came out of that cell twenty minutes a day to exercise indoors, in total silence. For eleven months, I didn’t speak to anybody ... one handles that sort of thing all right, you just contract your universe a bit, but I had a very serious reading disability, very similar to a stammer in speech, and I have it to this day. I get stuck when reading and can’t break past certain words. It is like a stammer in speech, and it is still with me. I don’t know how that developed in solitary confinement, but it did.