By Norm Dixon
JOHANNESBURG — Support continues to grow for the right of prisoners to vote in South Africa's first democratic elections. The announcement by the South African Prisoners' Organisation for Human Rights (SAPOHR) that prisoners would begin a campaign of mass action on March 1 generated enormous support for their demand for the right to vote.
Most importantly, the prisoners' call has been supported by the Independent Electoral Commission, the body overseeing the conduct of the April poll, and the African National Congress.
SAPOHR announced the suspension of the mass action campaign after the IEC agreed on March 4 to recommend to the Transitional Executive Council that all prisoners be allowed to vote. The IEC would urge the TEC to amend the Electoral Act. Currently, the vote is restricted to those prisoners serving a sentence with the option of a fine.
Popo Molefe, head of the ANC electoral commission, told Green Left Weekly on March 7 that the ANC believed the right to vote must be extended to every South African, including all prisoners. Molefe said that the bill of rights which is going to be entrenched in the constitution doesn't make the right to vote conditional. "It doesn't say you have the right vote provided you are not a prisoner. It gives it to all South Africans. It is a fundamental right that must be recognised now."
Molefe rejected the claim that depriving prisoners of the vote would reduce South Africa's crime rate: "There is definitely no connection between crime and the right to vote. There is no way in which a vote could encourage crime. When a person appears before a court, there is a sentence that the court considers commensurate with the crime committed. That is the punishment that that person is given ... We believe there should not be an additional sentence by denying them the right to vote."
Support for right of prisoners to vote has also come from the ANC Women's League. An unexpected source of support was an editorial in the Weekly Mail and Guardian which commented dryly: "... we are letting criminals run for parliament. We might as well let them vote." The editorial is referring to the fact that a man once jailed for killing his 15-year-old girlfriend, dismembering her body and attempting to dispose of the parts in a restaurant oven, is a National Party candidate.
Despite the suspension of the prisoners' mass action campaign, prison authorities continue to victimise SAPOHR members. SAPOHR leaders have been refused access to members behind bars. Prisoners at Leeuwkop Prison had their visiting times cut. Warders imposed a "go-slow" to create opposition to SAPOHR by blaming the disruption to visits on the prisoners who had embarked on peaceful protests.
SAPOHR spokesperson Marcus Cox said that 16 inmates participating in mass action were removed from Section A of Leeuwkop Prison. "Some were hospitalised after assaults by prison authorities." At Boksberg prison near Johannesburg, tear gas was fired at protesting prisoners.
SAPOHR chairperson Golden Miles Bhudu said that all reports indicate that prisoners' actions remained peaceful, yet many had been put in isolation. He added that SAPOHR was being forced to operate "underground" because mail and visits from SAPOHR officers were being stopped by prison authorities.
Bhudu warned that prisoners would resume their mass action campaign if the right to vote was not extended to them by the TEC.