For the many seniors in prison, the sun has already set on their lives. But beyond the forbidding grey walls of their damp cells, what rehabilitation and opportunities await them in society?

The prison walls are so high even the sun does not want to come in. The stinking corridors and cells are dark and damp; the cold, bitter world that is prison has been their home for years. In most cases, it is poverty that has pushed them to crime. There is punishment, and in some cases, repentance.
But what after life in prison? Do the state and society offer opportunities for mainstreaming senior convicts? They are taught skills at these correctional centers but how do they use them in the sunset years of their life?
I speak to three senior former convicts who served their life sentences. They find society forbidding and unforgiving, but in some cases, have moved on leading productive lives.
<div id="attachment_37504" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37504" class="wp-image-37504 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="494" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-853.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />Themba Mkhize. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Themba Mkhize, 68, is back in his home in Zola, in the historical township of Soweto in South Africa. He was sentenced to 42 years in 1996 for murder and robbery in KwaZulu-Natal. He was 48 at the time.
During his stay in prison, Mkhize fell sick and was taken to a prison closer to specialist doctors; he was told he was going to die.
“I thought to myself, before I die; let me move closer to my family. I was moved to Johannesburg Correctional Services and that’s where I finished my sentence,” says Mkhize.
Mkhize tells me about his experience in prison and the prevailing gangsterism.
“In jail, it’s fights. Every year, there’s a fight between the numbers gangs. You can’t tell anyone that it’s safe inside [in jail]. I then formed a group to fight these gangs; it was a success because we had professional fighters in the group. It was then that these gangs would ask to be moved to other prisons because we would give them hiding. This was until one of the gang members was beaten and died in hospital,” he recalls.
Mkhize served 11 years and eight months in prison and is on parole. While in prison, he spent most of his time doing electrical work, fixing televisions and radios among other things, to earn an income. After release, Mkhize struggled to find employment and solely relies on a pension grant of R1,700 ($114) a month.
Mkhize’s eight children left him after his arrest. His is currently living with his mother and girlfriend.
“Coming out as a senior citizen has affected me a lot. People look at you strangely; you are a thief, someone that can’t be trusted. Some fear me because I killed a policeman. Even my family, some don’t like me. Prison is not okay. But now that I’m old, I don’t care about a lot of things,” he says.
He joined a rehabilitation center in Soweto, but stopped attending it because he felt it wasn’t doing much to help ex-convicts.
<div id="attachment_37512" style="width: 750px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37512" class="wp-image-37512 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="494" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-766.jpg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />Simon Maqaqa. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
Five kilometers away, I visit Simon Sindile Maqaqa at his home in Dobsonville, Soweto. He is 52 years old and was also arrested for murder and robbery in 1998 and sentenced to life. He was released in 2013 on parole.
“After the parole board let me out into society, the community was okay with me and they were close to me. Later, they started treating me strangely and stigmatizing me. If a crime happened around the area, I would be the first suspect,” says Maqaqa.
He joined a program for convicts called Nacham (meaning ‘repent’ in Hebrew) that helped offenders fit into society.
<blockquote>“Inside prison, I loved woodwork. I went to school and did furniture-making and spray-painting and got my certificate in 2015. [But] when I try registering a company, I fail,” he says.</blockquote>
He goes on to say that the government does not offer enough opportunities for ex-convicts like him.
“They monitor you for 24 hours and let you out for good behavior, but once you are outside, the same government suppresses you.”
Maqaqa started a small business selling sweets and cigarettes after his release. With the money he saved, he built two rooms and is renting them out.
“I built them with my own hands because I also studied construction inside prison,” he says.
But there are success stories too.
Fifty-year-old Collin Khumalo from KwaZulu-Natal is a former prisoner currently living in Johannesburg, and he employs more than 200 people.
<div id="attachment_37510" style="width: 547px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37510" class="wp-image-37510 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-537x1024.jpg" alt="" width="537" height="1024" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-537x1024.jpg 537w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-300x573.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-600x1145.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-157x300.jpg 157w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133-768x1466.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/senior-133.jpg 1073w" sizes="(max-width: 537px) 100vw, 537px" />Collin Khumalo. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>
I call him and our conversation is engaging. God changed his life, he says.
Khamalo started shoplifting at the age of 14. In 1988, he moved to Johannesburg and continued with his nefarious activities.
“We committed fraud, and then moved to house-breaks, then robbery. It was like a small gang terrorizing the affluent suburbs of Johannesburg. It was then that we moved to cash-in-transit heists, until 1995, when I got arrested for murder, robbery and possession of a firearm and ammunition,” he says matter-of-factly.
In 1997, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and an additional 44 years.
While inside, Khumalo was angry he didn’t have a proper upbringing – his parents were non-existent to him. He didn’t know what the purpose of his life was. He soon became South Africa’s most notorious prison gang member and fought everyone. Khumalo was promoted from rank to rank and moved from prison to prison.
<blockquote>“In 2002, I was sent to a private prison in Venda. That is where my conscience and God started talking to me. I was listening to a man preach… That was the turning point in my life,” he recalls.</blockquote>
Khamalo broke the gangsters’ prison code by leaving a prison gang; he was promised death by all gangs for repenting.
He made a decision to get some form of education that same year and realized his purpose. By 2003, he started goading other inmates to stay away from gangsterism.
“In 2004, I started a program called Fear Free Life (inspire and encourage other men to lead better lives and become better fathers and husbands). When it started, the message was not to be vigilantes. It grew to be a very big thing, I registered it in 2009. By 2011, I was still in prison but it was given a quality assurance by the City Of Johannesburg to run the program in the whole Johannesburg Correctional Services,” he says.
In 2011, the then Minister of Correctional Services, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, announced that offenders sentenced to life imprisonment before March 1, 1994, could be considered for parole after serving 15 years of their sentence.
“By the grace of God, I had already attained a diploma in Human Resources and was rehabilitating other prisoners. I did all that without any expectation of going home. In July 2013, I was released on day parole. I would sleep in prison and during the day go out, [I did this] for six months,” he says.
With the vision he had for Fear Free Life, he pushed the program at schools talking about the negative impact of crime, drugs and gangsterism. He invested in the program with funds received from family members. This led to quality assurance by the City Of Johannesburg to run the program across schools, workplaces and prisons in South Africa in 2014.
<blockquote>“Going to prison was for coming across my destiny; it was something that was meant to happen. My prison experience shaped the man that I am today,” he says.</blockquote>
Today, Fear Free Life employs ex-convicts to help clean Johannesburg streets, and have recently garnered city development projects. Khumalo also works with artists.
Men like him prove there can be a life beyond the prison walls.

hands of a prisoner on prison bars

Age No Bar

It’s a sunny winter’s day at Avalon Cemetery, in Soweto, and there are rows of graves as far as the eye can see. For nearly 50 years, thousands have been buried here. We find 50-year old Dan Makete knee deep in a grave, digging out the dry soil for yet another burial.
“This is one of the few places I can ever find work. I get so comfortable, it’s like home,” he says.
Makete is one of thousands of ex-prisoners struggling. It is a sad story that began in 1995; the days of democracy and hope for South Africa were days of despair for him.
“Life was tough back then and I got involved in terrible things. I was arrested for armed robbery, house break-ins and hijacking,” he says.
The price was an 18-year jail term.
“Six of those years were suspended and because of good behavior, I served nine years [and] six months.”
But good behavior didn’t mean rehabilitation.
“Prison wasn’t correctional. I was in jail for a very long time but I didn’t get a skill or any kind of empowerment. We spent days doing nothing. The best you could do was work in the kitchen, dairy or maybe in the garden,” he says.
According to Makete, there was no counselling, meaning he went back to crime.
“When I got out for the second time, I had a different mind-set and wanted to make sure I don’t go back to crime. I have managed to stay clear of that but it is tough. I can’t find a decent job because I have no skill and employers don’t take people with criminal records.”
Makete takes any menial job that comes his way. One of them is cleaning and digging graves at the cemetery.
“If you aren’t strong enough you will go back to prison because there is nothing you can do. While I was in prison we fought, by hunger strike, to try convince them to empower us but there was never a response and if there was, they would promise but nothing would happen.”
Makete says he feels rehabilitated, but unskilled.
“I don’t see myself going back to prison because I have learned my lesson but the pain is I have been out of prison for years but there is a big stigma. You are used as an example. I have heard people say, ‘don’t be like that useless one’,” Makete says in a low voice.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/02/01/better-live-hell-south-african-prison/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8216;It&#8217;s Better To Live In Hell Than A South African Prison&#8217;</a>
With three children to support, life is tough, yet there is help at hand.
Founded in September 1910, the National Institute for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders (NICRO) specializes in helping people like Makete. It directly helps 12,000 to 15,000 people a year.
“This is a huge challenge because many of our ex-prisoners cannot find work because of the criminal record and sometimes it’s impossible. We were hoping to get enterprises up and running in order to employ ex-prisoners but it has not materialized yet,” says NICRO CEO, Soraya Solomon.
The vast majority of South African employers disqualify applicants with a criminal record. NICRO calls for employers to be more lenient.
“Aside from this practice being unconstitutional and a derogation of the right to equality and non-discrimination, a considerable part of the problem of crime in South Africa is that most offenders who wish to lead a crime-free life are prohibited from doing so because of their past actions. Having a criminal record for a less serious offence which occurred years ago should not be used to bar someone from gainful employment today,” she says.
Solomon recognizes that successful job applicants sometimes need to have no criminal record, especially for a particular type of offence, but says a balancing of rights is necessary.
For the system to work, she says rehabilitation must start as soon as the offender arrives in prison. The problem is there is overcrowding, few staff and low pay. It means a small percentage of prisoners have access to services to assist them in changing behavior. Upon release, most NGOs, like NICRO, do not have the money to help. In 2013, according to Solomon, about 23,000 inmates were released from South African correctional facilities while another 25,000 entered the system each month.
“Clearly the influx of prisoners will continue to be a problem and facilities will experience ever-increasing overcrowding and worsening prison conditions. We need to think beyond this present crisis in order to find sustainable solutions,” says Solomon.
Solomon and her team are attempting to find such solutions. They offer services for youth at risk, young people in conflict with the law, diversion services and non-custodial sentences served outside of prison that equip offenders to rehabilitate and reintegrate into society. Additionally, NICRO has designed a comprehensive community-based initiative to manage and significantly reduce the number of remand detainees in correctional centers.
“NICRO’s remand solution has been designed to  reduce prison overcrowding and the processing time of offenders, prevent low-risk offenders from being sent to prison while on remand, provide much-needed and often overlooked key services, such as victim and trial support, preparation for incarceration, restorative justice interventions and professional comprehensive assessment to reduce recidivism,” Solomon explains.
Clinical psychologist and criminologist, Craig Traub, agrees with Solomon. He says the criminal justice system is more retributive than rehabilitational.
“Unfortunately prison systems, without bounds of stimulation, tend to be systems to improve criminality and criminal behavior in terms of skills, deception, and familiarity. Being a warden and nursing staff in prison is tremendously noble and dangerous. In that, increased employment packages for these workers would benefit the system as a whole,” says Traub.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2016/09/01/prison-cell-red-carpet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">From Prison Cell To Red Carpet</a>
In the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services’ (JICS) 2015/2016 annual report, Inspecting Judge Johann van der Westhuizen found only 46% of centers visited had permanently employed educators. To make it worse, some centers in small rural areas did not offer any education, rehabilitation or vocational opportunities.
“We were informed that inmates who wish to further their education are transferred to centers with educational facilities. This, however, results in the inmates being transferred further away from their family. This in turn limits visits and the family interaction that is crucial for a successful reintegration into the community,” says Van der Westhuizen.
To make matters worse, inmates sentenced to 24 months or less do not take part in any programs but are rather considered for parole on completion of a quarter of their sentence in terms of section 73 (6) (a) of the Correctional Services Act.
It is a problem that lawyers can fix, but it comes at a high price. This means the poor, like Makete, suffer more while those who have done worse get off more lightly because they have money.
According to Traub, the poor sometimes suffer because forensic workers are overloaded; DNA/fingerprint measures aren’t always done in time, evidence goes missing, is stolen or sold, and oversight mechanisms to prevent police and government corruption are laughable.
“Again, those who are better educated and skilled have a higher likelihood of gaining employment, despite their record, than those who are not,” says Traub.
Traub says to better prepare prisoners for reinsertion into the society we need more halfway houses for prisoners, similar to those of addict rehabilitation. These would incorporate a gradual step-by-step facility, general reintroduction, skills-of-daily-living workshops and a person who can facilitate such a move.
If ex-offenders are able to find lawful employment, there are broad social benefits. According to Solomon, in a German study, the re-offending rate was reduced by 30%, and in the US by 20%. In South Africa, she says, the government would save about R7.3 million ($550,000) a month if 20% less of the 4,300 offenders released monthly did not re-offend.
“For that reason alone, reintegrating ex-offenders and supporting employment as a key part of that process is in everyone&#8217;s interest,&#8221; says Solomon.
The government may be trying, but not hard enough.
South Africa tried a restorative justice system, during the transition from apartheid South Africa to a free one, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Here, a criminal would return or give something the aggrieved requires or deserves, for example through a truth-telling testimony. Some would argue that this system played a role in rehabilitation.
Another problem is the country’s criminal record system. For example, in some cases diversion – a process to steer lower risk offenders away from the criminal justice system while still holding them accountable for their actions, by making the offender perform some sanction, such as attending a behavior change program or counselling, pay a fine or perform unpaid community service – doesn’t work.
“A person who is diverted does not have a criminal record. However, it has come to NICRO’s attention that despite being diverted, a number of people report that a criminal conviction has been recorded against their name. This is typically found out when a person applies for a job or a visa for travel,” says Solomon.
According to Solomon, this is the result of a clerical error between the court clerks and the South African Police Services (SAPS) and can be corrected by approaching the court clerk, where the diversion was ordered.
“There are many incidents where adults committed a less serious offence when they were younger and find later in life that they cannot obtain employment or educational bursaries. At the same time, other people who have committed similar offences are being diverted without any criminal record,” she says.
To add to that, South Africa’s criminal justice system allows for a criminal record to be expunged. The tricky part is the offender must wait 10 years before applying. This means although ex-prisoners, like Makete, have served their time, they may continue to pay for their crimes once released.
“In many of these cases, the period of 10 years of being unable to travel, obtain employment and, in many cases, being unable to study further, embody sanctions that are more severely punitive than the offence warrants,” says Solomon.
Without enough rehabilitation programs, South Africa has a cancerous crime problem. It is so bad that a First National Bank study found that crime was one of the reasons hundreds of South Africans were selling their homes and moving overseas.
It sees the cost of crime far outweighing the cost of rehabilitating criminals.

The Grime That Comes With Crime

Yoga, which enjoys iconic status as an exercise form in today’s bustling metropolises, is a practice that dates back 5,000 years to the Indus-Sarasvati civilization of northern India. It is popular for its countless healing and rehabilitative benefits. Cape Town-based yoga practitioners Brian Bergman and Leela Codron thought: why not take it to prison inmates?
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30730 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Still6-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still6-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still6-600x337.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still6-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still6-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Still6.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Through SevaUnite, a non-profit organization based in South Africa’s Mother City, the two are now popularizing yoga’s downward dog pose and meditation in some of the country’s most prominent prisons.
“A group of yoga friends wanted to set up something that provided a platform to encourage people to follow the path of Seva yoga or self-esteem service as a means to self-development,” says Bergman, the founder of SevaUnite.
‘Seva’ is a Sanskrit word meaning service. SevaUnite identifies ways to selflessly serve.
“We always had an interest in doing prison work so we put out feelers but nothing really happened until Leela came back after spending a year at the ashram in India where we trained in this particular style of yoga. When she came back, we decided to go full time into doing the Seva project, that’s when things started to roll,” he says.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30696 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2015/08/Still2-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Still2-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Still2-600x337.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Still2-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Still2-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Still2.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
With close to 200,000 inmates currently incarcerated in South Africa, they began at the Pollsmoor Maximum Facility in Cape Town – notorious for housing gang leaders and hardened criminals.
In his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, the country’s late president Nelson Mandela, who has also served time in the prison, states “Pollsmoor had a modern face but a primitive heart”.
“It took us about a year to get into Pollsmoor initially. Just trying and knocking on their doors and we finally got granted access in 2011 and the project has just gone like that, us spearheading it and pushing it and slowly listening to all the signs and following them, we grew the project,” says Bergman.
Starting with one yoga class in the admissions center of the prison, the project has now expanded to classes in the male juvenile section and the women’s unit. SevaUnite also offers weekly classes at the Malmesbury Medium Facility in Cape Town and Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria.
“The inmates have always responded well, they’ve always really loved it. It’s the staff that has been a bit tricky. You get mixed reactions because of the misconceptions of yoga – that it’s a religion or only practiced by certain kinds of people. We also get mixed responses from the public where a lot of people feel that prisoners don’t deserve this type of program or luxury so to speak,” he says.
Bergman and Codron eschew the notion of yoga being luxurious or a passing fad. Yoga is discipline; it’s about harmonizing the body with the mind and breath through breathing techniques (as the first United Nations’ International Day of Yoga on June 21 demonstrated).
“We teach a much more integrated holistic approach which brings in a huge amount of mindfulness and incorporates a big body of yoga knowledge and at that level it becomes much more transformative. You see that with the prisoners, it does create that transformation in them, it rehabilitates,” says Bergman.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30728 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Brian-and-Leela-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian-and-Leela-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian-and-Leela-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian-and-Leela-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian-and-Leela.jpg 960w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
Unlike mantra meditation, which involves focused concentration on a particular word or sound, mindfulness achieves a relaxed, non-judgmental awareness of your thoughts, feelings and sensations.
“You do one class and you immediately feel the effects of it. In a place that’s very stressful, intense and overcrowded and just not a nice place to be, anything you can do for yourself, to make yourself feel better immediately is going to be well received,” adds Codron.
As the saying goes, “the only difference between saints and sinners is that every saint has a past while every sinner has a future”, Bergman is hopeful he will see some positive changes in the future.
“They are making that transformation where they may have done something wrong and were considered sinners but they’ll come out like saints. There are a few of those guys that I can’t wait to see on the outside and see what they do with their lives,” says Bergman.
The prison gangs in South Africa are intricate – and fearsome. The Numbers Gangs make up three gangs in prison – the 26s, 27s and 28s. The 26s are scammers and counterfeiters, the 27s are ‘Manskap of blood’ or murderers and criminals, and the 28s are sex offenders.
Prisoners network into gangs in relation to their offence. The Number Gangs take their inspiration from the real historical figure who founded them, Nongoloza Mathebula, an early Johannesburg bandit who built a quasi-military band of outlaws, welding his small army together with a simple but potent ideology of banditry-as-anti-colonial-resistance.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30729 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga-300x169.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="169" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga-600x337.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Brian_yoga.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
“In Malmesbury, we’re apparently teaching some notorious gang leaders but we didn’t even know, that’s how different they appear to us. You can see they’ve got tattoos – 26, 27 and 28 all over them but they are such amazing men. So open and very honest, their development since August is phenomenal,” says Codron.
“It’s a constant dance between connecting with people who on one hand are completely different from you but on the other hand are exactly the same.”
From gangsters to gurus, the inmates know one thing for sure – that yoga is ‘time’ well-spent.

Still3

How Criminals Free Their Mind Behind Bars

June 12, 1964 was a cold and miserable day for Denis Goldberg and his comrades. They shuffled out of the cells and up the wooden steps to the courtroom at the Palace of Justice, in Pretoria, expecting to be told they were going to die.
Goldberg had stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki and other activists facing charges of sabotage. Mandela and his comrades spent months in the cells contemplating how large the death penalty loomed.
<div id="attachment_855" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-855" class="size-large wp-image-855" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par3053826-1024x685.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="317" />Former South African president and Nobel peace prize laureate Nelson Mandela (L) greets former political prisoner Dennis Goldberg (R) during a Lunch for Apartherid former political prisoners at Genadendal, the official residence of the president, in Cape Town, South Africa on February 12, 2010. AFP PHOTO/GCIS/HO/Elmond Jiyane &#8211;RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE&#8212;</div>
“One day he says to me ‘Denis, I want you to know that when you teach poor people about Marxism, don’t talk about slavery and feudalism and mercantile capitalism, that’s European stuff our people don’t know or understand it, it’s meaningless. You have to talk about Southern African society, how we get to be where we are, the working class and this and that.’ And I said to him, ‘I understand that but why are you telling me?’ He said ‘Oh, I just want you to know what I think’, we didn’t take it further but I was quite sure he was confident, no, certain, that he was going to be hanged,” says Goldberg at Liliesleaf, in Rivonia, near Johannesburg, where he was arrested nearly half a century ago ahead of the trial of the century.
Tension was high in the packed courtroom on that fateful June day, where the judge surprised many by handing down life imprisonment, instead of the death penalty.
“And it dawned on us that we weren’t going to die, not then anyway, and we laughed, my memory is we laughed. Two great moments in that trial, the other one is Nelson daring the judge to hang him, hang Walter, hang Dennis, hang them all and then, that not happening. What a moment,” says Goldberg.
“About a year ago, I asked him why they didn’t hang us, he said: ‘I dared them to and they didn’t dare.’” He has always had this simple psychology; you stand up to people and dare them to the limit. I think it’s more complex, than he’s saying, but that challenge was a very important challenge. Here, were thoughtful leaders.”
Imprisonment, on that cold June day, was the end of a short but memorable association with Mandela. Goldberg was incarcerated in a whites-only prison in Pretoria, while Mandela was sent back to Robben Island and the two didn’t meet again for nearly 30 years.
The two met through activism. Goldberg grew up in a family of activists in Cape Town and was drawn to the underground movement. Because he was a road engineer, everyone assumed he could make bombs and it became his job. Mandela had worked his way up to be a lawyer and head of the ANC Youth League. The two men, who were like chalk and cheese, stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the dock in Pretoria.
“They brought Nelson to the court in leg-irons and handcuffs and this humiliating prison house-boy’s uniform. When I bought my first suit I paid 12 guineas for it. Nelson wore tailored suites that cost 75 guineas—I’m trying to say, that this is a very elegant dresser. And he stood there in his prison uniform. Legally, he should not be handcuffed and in leg-irons before the judge because it’s prejudicial, but he was looking so elegant and very hungry. He’d been in prison on Robben Island and this very strongly built man of 45 had sunken cheeks, eyes staring a bit, but holding himself… he was not going to be brow-beaten. Impressive, very impressive. I had a slab of chocolate with me, I showed it to him… I was standing right next to him and indicating if he wanted some. I broke off a square and gave it to him, he took it in his handcuffed hands, right over his face, and there was a little sharp corner near his sunken cheeks and he sucked it, as only a prisoner who has no sweet things can enjoy. As soon as it was gone, then he asked for a bit more,” says Goldberg.
Goldberg served 22 years in prison and was escorted by police out of his own country to spend even more years in exile in London. He returned to South Africa, around 10 years ago , to advise the new government and now lives in tranquil retirement in Hout Bay, near Cape Town. Goldberg believes this retirement would not have been so peaceful if it had not been for the great man himself.
“There’s enough bitterness, there’s enough anger and resentment, had there been a real civil war in the streets we wouldn’t be where we are today, we wouldn’t be sitting at Liliesleaf. We’d be sitting in the smoking ruins of destroyed country, so Nelson Mandela with this whole background, he, Nelson Mandela taking office with this whole background of four years of negotiation and putting out the fires of the violence of the apartheid,” he says.

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