“We are all prisoners but
some of us are in cells with windows and some without.” - Kahlil Gibran
In the last couple of dark moons, a singsong that
has caught my attention the most is the one on prisons and warts. For now, put
aside the play scripts on the allegations of cowards; “haulas”; namby-pambies
in sisal wigs; and, of treason for allegedly eating, then stealing Pride, the
King’s prized cockerel. Take a Yoga position, and mull over Hakainde Hichelema,
Mwaliteta, prison and warts. Think of their memory of our prisons.
“Dehumanising, urine, faecal
matter, disease infested, migodi (pit latrines)..,”
are surely their memories. Rather nightmarish.
Lest we forget, the Zambia
Human Rights Commission has for years, consistently provided us with Reports on
prison conditions in the country. The singsong is the same, only the time
changes.
Overcrowding and poor sanitary
conditions! This is, in part due to unreasonable durations of pre-trial
detentions. Overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions, the Reports say, have resulted
in the prevalence of diseases like scabies and warts.
For instance, the 2007
Annual State of Human Rights in Zambia tells us that, “there are 1, 826 terminally ill prisoners countrywide”. In the same
year, we are also told of a prisoner who had been locked up for 5 years without
trial as he never appeared in Court since his arrest in March 2002; and of, another
individual who the Court sentenced to 5 years imprisonment after waiting for 5
years for his judgment (Well, he was released as he had already spent 5 years
in Scheol).
In 2008, the singsongs include
a suspect accused of robbery, who had been in prison since 2005, last appeared
in Court in 2006 and allegedly had been locked up without trial because his
case record could not be found; and, an HIV positive individual remanded in
prison and denied access to ARVs for two months.
Come 2015, the singsong is
now mangy dog-eared. People die! ‘The
most common illnesses that result in natural deaths in these facilities are tuberculosis,
pneumonia, hepatitis B, malaria...’[1]
Of course, people die!
Really wonder why the Human
Rights Commission ever bothers.
Well, let us get back to Hichelema
and Mwaliteta. It now should not surprise you that their walk to freedom is not
as memorable an experience, as the warts. I do not seek to minimise the unacceptable cruelty
suffered. I really thought an enforced wart on a fellow like Hichelema, Mwaliteta
or the late Michael Sata (he once spent 27 days in prison, long enough for
warts to set in) would make us howl together with the Human Rights Commission.
Fact is, Hichelema’s, Mwaliteta’s
concern on warts in our prisons cannot evoke howlings on what we are as a
people, just like the Human Rights Reports do not. We just do not care!
If we did. We would not have
the majority of our people still doing their early morning rituals in migodi; they will not still be drinking
water from holes connected to migodi.
This happens, while in an unthinking stupor we celebrate a sickening self-impoverishing
public expenditure culture of luxury SUVs. How then can it be that warts will
really concern us!
Could be, that is why we even build roads that tomorrow, are migodi.
I have been on prison
condition visits, before. Our prisons are places that make you more somber than
the places of many crosses where we like wetting our eyes. The prisons call out
to your inner soul, even if you do not have a conscience. They call forth in you,
questions of how we can treat fellow humans worse than hogs on an average European
farm.
Enforced warts can be very
painful, especially if they develop in the nether ends. Unless of course, if one
is juiced on my beloved grandmother’s paraffin and battery acid laced seven-days
brew. Pity, my grandmother has not yet secured a prisons export permit for her
brew. So, it is unlikely that anyone who has experienced our prisons cannot lament about enforced warts.
Let us start saying, no to warts and migodi.
Warts and migodi are an inerasable epitaph
of what we are, what we need to change in ourselves, irrespective of how often
we break the stone.
In any case, it is written in the stars, that our existence should light
the path of darkness, not only for ourselves but more so for those that come
before us, for those that do not have the strength to walk with us, and for
those that fall before us.
We are the light, and our ways, not our words, should be the living
monuments of that light. We should never dance to warts and migodi. This is the promise, and we
should always keep it.
Pax vobiscum - Peace be with you.
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