Jacqueline A Gibbons. Prison Journal. Volume 78, Issue 3, September 1998.
This article discusses imprisoned women’s lives in the new South Africa. To have some sense of historical lead in, there follows a preamble which sets forth some key concepts, historical moments, and scenes that have shaped the nation that is on the Southern most part of continental Africa. Certainly, South Africa is an intriguing country in the 1990s because it is a nation that has finally unshackled itself from colonization of the past and endemic racism of the recent present.
Historically, the middle of the 19th century comprised much bloodshed as Cape Colony Boers (descendants of the early Dutch, French, and German immigrants) made what was called the great trek as they moved northward to segregate and separate themselves from the British colonists to the south. The Boers fought with native people as they moved north to carve out and shape a society that reflected their migrant values. They settled and farmed in what was, in the 19th century, the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the South African Republic.
The mid-20th century saw the ruling elite ushering in the policies of apartheid. This was to shape the lives of two generations of South Africans. Black Africans were contained in large compounds of townships that were walled or fenced in. They had to have permission to travel and move around outside their contained locale, and they were perceived as useful unskilled labor. Educational and occupational opportunities were severely limited.
Recent Transition and the New South Africa
The transition to democracy in South Africa was marked by the elections of April 1994. This was preceded by a new constitution that came into effect in 1984 and the repeal of a number of laws that had underlined apartheid by 1986, including the repeal of the pass laws and the making of legislation that granted Blacks limited rights to own property in Black urban areas. Throughout the transition from racial segregation to liberalization leading up to the 1994 elections, there was always deep opposition from right-wing groups and severe state repression of local township communities. (Many White extremists were so deeply threatened that, for example, in 1993, some senior retired army officers had proposed a separate Afrikaner state that proposed an informal alliance with as many as 21 right-wing organizations?) Despite such opposition, April 27, 1994 saw the interim constitution brought into force, and Nelson Mandela became officially elected president by the National Assembly on May 9, 1994. Soon after the inauguration of the new cabinet, plans were announced by government to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights violations that had been perpetrated under the old regime. These hearings were headed up by Archbishop Tutu, and they have continued until today as people speak out on the atrocities that were committed during the regime of apartheid and as questions of reconciliation and forgiveness are considered. By November 1994, legislation was at last passed that formally restored land ownership rights to people of Black ancestry and who had been dispossessed by the discriminatory legislation that went back to 1913. Yet again, this legislation was much contested by Whites who saw their power eroding.
The new constitution was finally adopted in May 1996, when each province got its own legislature and proportional representation became the new reality.
The Constitution
The making of a new constitution is a radical development in the reshaping of a nation. This new document, in its preamble, states recognition of the injustices of the past; it honors those who suffered injustice, stresses the foundation of a new democracy, and argues that unity grows from national diversity (The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, p. 1). Thus,
The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth (The Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, p. 1, Ch. 2, Section 9).
The history of South Africa has thus undergone considerable and varied formulations of colonial and legislative imperatives. Not unconnected with this has been the history of incarceration. A key, in the years of apartheid, has been the repressiveness of prison environments. Political prisoners became internationally famous, with one becoming the current president. At the same time, there were thousands who remained nameless in a scenario in which Afrikaners controlled the correctional services. With recent liberalization of laws, the after-elections (to democracy) phase, and finally, with the new constitution, there is a certain new openness to issues of incarceration. It is with this in mind that I was able to visit some of the prisons in South Africa and to spend time in the women’s prisons in the Cape region.
The Western Cape (also the location of the Cape of Good Hope) has the largest multicultural mix in the whole of South Africa. It is here that Malay, Indian, colored (i.e., mixed race), Afrikaner (White), and Black African groups have separated themselves, been segregated, or mingled despite or because of the laws of the nation for so many years. Data from the 1993 Cape Metro census show about a million coloreds, half a million Africans, and half a million Whites in the population statistics. Most of the women incarcerated in these regions are of the first two aforementioned categories when old categorizations are applied, which is relevant in these cases in that it illustrates that the majority of incarcerated women are also from the underclass.
Women and South Africa
Hansson (1995) powerfully explores the long absence of a national feminist organization in South Africa and the small production of feminist discourses in academia until the onset of the 1990s. She points to the separate agendas of Black women from others, as they face their community problems and frustrations. She adds that feminist scholars need to produce methodological deconstructions of the criminological discourses, and she states that women are hardly touched in the literatures on incarceration (Hansson, 1995). Despite her comments that race and class interests are more likely to stay dominant in the political agenda, she argues the case that with the increase of women working in the various sectors of government, there will be changes in the ways that gender interests are addressed. Questions of violence against women in South African society were not addressed until the late 1970s. Discussion about sexual crimes and crimes of violence
was (and still is) invariably limited to a tabulation of the “elements” of each crime and an abstract discussion of the trickier legal issues. The complex, interrelated problems of the definition of such crimes, their prosecution, and social perceptions of them have not yet received the attention of those writing the “standard” texts in South Africa. (Kagunas & Murray, 1994, pp. 20-21)
And again, on the subject of rights claims as they link with political and legal discourse, it is argued that such claims, as they reflect women’s experiences and interpretations remain “one of the most important tasks for the women’s movement in South Africa” (Albertyn, 1994, pp. 62-63).
Ruth First (1965) wrote and published as a political prisoner from the apartheid regime. A number of other political and literary leaders of the anti-apartheid period made and presented the cause of imprisonment to a wider world audience (Breytenbach, 1984; Sachs, 1966; Mandela, 1994). More recently, Munnik and Naude (1996) have addressed White prisoner status. There remains, however, a lack of published literature on the current status of South African women’s incarceration.
Site-Visit Observations
I have visited South Africa as a visiting scholar on two occasions: during the summer of 1995 and in the spring of 1997. On the first trip, I visited the women’s prison in Durban and also one of the two women’s facilities in the western Cape region. The second visit involved a period of time in this Cape area where I made a day visit to one of the two women’s facilities and where I was privileged to spend 6 days at the second facility, which houses both short- and long-term women. This latter location is where I was able to conduct interviews and to administer a brief questionnaire on which the present report is based.
With advanced collaboration with the Department of Corrections, I was permitted to chat generally with inmates inside the facility while accompanied by staff and to conduct interviews one-to-one along with an interpreter. Interviewees were chosen by the administration subject only to my request for representation from the varied ethnic and racial backgrounds, which was granted.
Open-ended interviews were conducted with 15 inmates who included the previously categorized divisions, whose nomenclature continues in the South Africa of today; thus, inmates of Black, colored, and White backgrounds all shared their observations and insights. I had the assistance of a senior student from one of the Cape Town universities who spoke five African languages well. Where women were most comfortable with their own language, interviews were conducted in that language. Topics ranged from visitation problems to work within the prison and on the outside.
Interviews took from 20 to 45 minutes. Questions were open-ended, allowing for, and encouraging elaboration of, response. In addition to the 15 interviews with inmates, many of whom shared intelligent curiosity about prisons in Canada and North America, there were two interviews with social workers and one with the education officer. Of the interviews with the social workers, one lasted 15 minutes and the other, half an hour. The education officer was new in the prison and shared about 40 minutes of her time in total. The head of the prison shared many hours of her time in discussion. Several members of the staff gave their time and energy, as long as English was their language of communication.
Administration and Affirmative Action
Van Zyl Smit (in press), in observing the role of administration in South Africa’s prisons over the past two decades, notes the centrality of bureaucratization and the tight military lines that have been typical of the regime. He also points to the opening up from severe censorship, which has happened during this decade. In fact, staff and members of the administration are wrestling with the requirements of change coming from above. The democratization of prison culture is showing itself through the elimination of military rank and the diminution of military insignia. It also manifests itself through the new hiring of staff of colored and (Black) African background who are mostly new and who are stepping cautiously as they start to shape new pathways, for example, in the areas of social work and prison staffing. Predictably, those administrative staff who have been in the system for many years find change more difficult. Those who are newer in the system bring to it new ideas, and there is clearly effort to alter old ways and attempts to bring in new ideas. Change cannot come easily to any regime that has had enormous power and complete (quasi-military) autonomy for so many years.
Education
Only in the last few years have problems of educational inequality been addressed by the South African government in the general and free populations. Schooling for people other than the White populations has been under-resourced (Cape Metro census, 1993), and Whites have about twice the amount of educational qualifications as do other groups (Cape Metro census, 1993). It should be born in mind that South Africa has extraordinarily high rates of unemployment; the Black unemployment rate is estimated at 41%, with higher rates among young people (Brent, 1996). These rates are probably in reality even higher because there has been huge migration to urban areas and a city such as Cape Town has not included many of these migrant numbers (Cape Metro census, 1993) in their statistics.
In terms of prisons and their educational facilities:
The inescapable conclusion is that South African prison law relating to study has been blighted by its history of discrimination against political prisoners and also by the misguided notion that the pains of imprisonment may be increased by depriving prisoners of education from which they could only benefit after their release. In this respect, prisoners are in the hands of the prison authorities. (Van Zyl Smit, 1992, p. 211)
It seems as if many of these remarks apply today. There was no educational/schooling facility at the prison at the time of this research, although it was promised in a month or two.
Child Care
Based on the brief questionnaire I was allowed to administer to all of the sentenced inmates, all of the women reported having at least one child in their care on the outside, ranging up to a high of 8. Almost two fifths (39%) had only one, 25% had two, 22% had three, and the remainder had 4 or more. Children’s ages ranged from 2 to 39, with more than 80% being 16 or younger. Clearly, this raises a major question concerning family leadership for a nation in which women are key caretakers.
Five respondents had children younger than 2 years old who qualify for living with their mothers inside the prison. Women may keep their babies for the first 2 years of the children’s lives. By allowing women to keep infants up until they are at least 2 years old, the prisons seem to be addressing the dominant norms of child responsibility and some of the child-caring needs of the culture. Babies can sleep in a cot beside their mothers, and there is a small babies wing, the creche, which is a hive of activity during the day while most women are working elsewhere. Here, there is a special kitchen where food for the infants is prepared. Caretaking at the nursery is done by designated inmates who can volunteer their services. They are initially picked and thus approved by the administration. The creche singles itself out as an area where there are murals. These pictorial depictions are in stark contrast to the long, bare corridors of all other areas. It may be that the decorative creche area reflects dominant values of woman as childcarer, as shared by the Afrikaner administration and also, it seems, by the women themselves.
Mothers who move their children from one location to another strap the babies on to their backs, wrapping material or towelling around their chests and waists so the children are comfortably carried. This traditional and continental style simplifies child movement inside an institution. It is clear that the inmates are very much involved with their baby population. They help one another out with infant care during evenings and at other times. When infants are part of the prison environment, an important element of normalcy seems to be added to the lives of incarcerated women. The children offer reasons for nurturance and personal fulfillment and a distraction from the coldness that typifies many prison facilities. Babies can stay for up to 2 years, after which they are supposed to be sent outside to relatives/family. It is very unusual that children have nowhere to go. It seems that every effort is taken by family and friends to house young children, and foster care is rare.
Children can have toys, often made of wood, and there were also wooden rocking horses in the creche. These items are made by the male inmates in the adjoining prison. The men also make the baby cots that stand beside the mothers’ beds in their dormitories. Here is an interesting aspect of paternalism in the jail: Men are taught carpentry in their facility, and their labor represents low expense (cheap labor) from the perspective of the administration. In addition, the metal bed frames and steel lockers in all facilities are made in the welding shop on the male side.
Maintenance of Family
An important issue for women on the inside is the question of visiting. The prisons in the Western Cape are not in cities and thus require the complications of special attention to transport, which cannot necessarily be done by public transit. This means that many inmates receive a smattering of visits because families are far away and for most, there is limited transportation availability and visiting takes time away from work and family. In all fairness to prison administrations, there are programs in which volunteers on the outside bring young children to see their mothers for visits; these arrangements can be fraught with uncertainty, however, because the logistics of the travel can be complicated because of questions of distance and communication. Even such things as telephone contact can be problematic because many people do not have home phones. The volunteer programs are also undermined by linguistic limitation when volunteers can speak only English or Afrikans. No doubt with the current culture of change, the variety of volunteer language/culture may be broadened.
Clothes
Clothes represent the layering of meaning systems for cultures and for specific genders. The women in the prison wear frocks–a light textured one in the summer and a heavier garment in the winter. These dresses are part of the prison work in the institution, and women can have two of each. The dresses are modest and can be chosen from several basic fabric designs. These frocks are their basic uniforms, and they wear socks in winter with their shoes, which gives the impression of uniformed school girls. These garments represent a desexualization in appearance, which runs in marked contrast to the dress of women on the outside who, whether in dresses or in pants, show a different pride of personal presentation and social demeanor. It should be recalled that the little frock was the garment that clad orphan girls in 19th-century Europe, and it was the uniform of servant girls who had no official uniforms. By contrast, tribes throughout South Africa take pride in their tribal identity through certain uniformities of appearance. The clothing of women inside the prison connotes layering of meaning systems not lost on the prison administrators and on others. I was present at a fashion parade put on by the inmates for one another. This was definitely an opportunity to dress with style and to walk with pizzazz. The occasion was accompanied by music, dancing, cheering, and general joyfulness. This was also an apparently rare opportunity for women to come together as a large community in the sharing of pleasure. A number of the babies were present.
Languages as Colonial Signifiers
The layering of linguistic systems in South Africa has symbolized the hierarchical socioeconomic ordering of the colonial, postcolonial, and apartheid schemes of life. Africans and English have been the languages of dominant discourse. Africans, as has been mentioned, is the dominant language of the prison administrative system. Announcements are made in Africans, many of the administration (some would say most) do not speak English, and less than a handful speak Xhosa or any other African language. This makes for a simplified communication system between guards and inmates. It also favors Africans speakers in the inmate population because these are women who can more successfully negotiate for their needs and anxieties and/or attempt to address their frustrations. Although slightly more than 50% of the inmates report Africans as their first language of communication, approximately one third indicated that Xhosa was their first language, one quarter indicated English, and the remainder indicated other languages.
A form of cultural imperialism occurs inside the dormitories where there is usually a television. The channel is chosen by the strong leaders in that dormitory; thus, whole segments of the dormitory population do not get to understand the news, current affairs, or anything else.
Work
Inside. In a world where one of the key activities in the women’s prison is a hard day in the laundry, many women state that they are grateful to be exhausted at the end of the day. In this way, they do not have much strength or energy to dwell on their own personal problems and worries. Laundry work was defended at one of the female prisons by the administration. They stated that in a survey conducted on the subject of laundry work, most women said they enjoyed this. In the absence of other forms of employment, this makes some sense in terms of inmate energy handling and questions of administrative control. Laundry work does serve as a vital function in the provision of cheap (female) labor. The laundry also processes the sheets and bedding of some of the male sections of the prison. There is too the added benefit of personal laundry needs for the administration. They have their uniforms laundered by the women inmates, and some state with pride that this means that they can have a new uniform each day. Additionally, administration can bring their home/personal laundry to the prison laundry, where it is weighed and money is charged for its laundering, by the weight.
Industrial sewing is also done in the women’s prison, and a key arena of production is the green work overalls and uniforms of the male prisoners as well as the male undergarments. Although women represent 4% of the incarcerated population, their productivity levels are enormous in these areas. This is certainly domestic garment production for the male population that is, among other things, maternalism personified, according to administrative (Afrikaner) needs and perceptions.
Perhaps one of the most telling statements about gender-related work differences is made by walking from the women’s facility, where laundry and sewing are the key activities, to the male facility, where they have occupational training in carpentry, welding, furniture making, and the learning of upholstery. There is also an auto paint and spray shop and a catering school where male inmates learn the work of a commercial kitchen and the arts of cooking and being a waiter. The males also take care of all gardens and outdoor grass and grounds work.
Outside. The largest problem for the women who are inside is the question in their hearts and minds about who is looking after their kids, their mothers, their aunts, and/or their relations. Many of the women state that they are key supporters of their households and that being in prison is a major economic and emotional blow for their families. They speak about their worries for the children’s safety on the outside: that daughters are not raped and that sons do not get into trouble. Their concerns center on the fact that they are no longer in the heart of their households to take care of everything. For many of these women, their absences from home means loss of labor in the home and, where possible, loss of jobs and thus revenue, regardless of what the jobs may have entailed.
All the women express frustration about the lack of job opportunities on the outside, and nearly all say that they are prepared to do any work wherever it is available (restaurant work, hotel work, and domestic cleaning are common expectations). Some say that they would like to further their education and to continue studying. Many of the women state that they do char work (cleaning) if and when they can. Certainly, they are well-practiced in these tasks within the prison facility where they are indeed responsible for all cleaning.
An important corollary of their child care responsibilities on the outside is that women are less mobile than are their men, and they cannot so easily migrate to the locations of certain job markets where men make money as temporary or permanent migrant laborers in the agricultural jobs that are prolific in the rural regions (Murray, 1995); women thus make do with the jobs that they can find.
Spirituality
Many of the women are deeply religious, and the prison provides Protestant services for them every day. At one of the two prisons, the women had a much respected choir that was in high demand in the community outside. It was clear that their singing served as inspiration and as catharsis (Gibbons, 1997). Unlike the trend in North America for aboriginal spirituality to be given its place in many prisons of the nation (sweat lodges, drumming, dancing, chanting), these women are not encouraged to explore their aboriginal/tribal and spiritual roots. In a nation that is publicly proclaiming pride in its multicultural heritage, the scenario on the inside is rather different.
Personal Relations
When women’s friendships are seen to be threatened by lesbianism, there is a powerful culture from the administration in the women prisons that censors this. It is seen as reason to punish women. This is clearly an issue that seems, according to a more liberal North American tradition, encased in ideologies and myths of the past. The issue of gay rights is only now being (uncomfortably) confronted by staff and administration.
The New Constitution
I was present at a particularly salient moment in the new democracy. The most recent edition of the new constitution (which is free of charge for all citizens) was introduced into the prison (one copy for each inmate) in a special ceremony one morning. All inmates were brought into the largest room and speeches were made by two local politicians in Afrikans and in English (thus, Xhosa-speaking women who were unilingual were left out of this process). Many women did not hear very much of what was said because the acoustics were so problematic. The new constitution was placed on a table and after the introduction and explanations, the women were free to go up to the table and take their own copies. There were many books left on the table after the event. Was this absent-mindedness? Or was it that the meaning of freedom has its own particular characteristics when one is in jail? In addition to the above possibilities, it may also be that the reality of new notions of equality is yet to percolate through to the majority of South Africans because their lives, even on the outside, are so clouded by the physical, cultural, and psychological past in which inequality has been the most powerful of norms.
Conclusion
It goes without saying that the lack of job training and educational opportunities inside the women’s prison contrast negatively with the stated aspirations of the new South Africa. The ambitions of the constitution are at present a far cry from the social and economic realities for the vast majority of imprisoned women. There is too an irony in the question of education, because there are data showing that indigenous/native literacy rates are higher for women than for men. Consequently, educational, job, and occupational training could come more easily and with greater flexibility if these were to be offered to the incarcerated female population.
It is clear, as in many other countries in the world, that because of economies of size, women in South Africa are not offered the variety of job skill or educational training that is offered in male institutions. It is notable too that the adoption and final implementation of the new constitution in 1996 has begun some embryonic rethinking about individual and constitutional rights by the administration and by members of correctional services. It is clear too that the Afrikaner-speaking women have an edge over their non-Afrikaner-speaking sisters: This continues the discourse of the past of racial and cultural hegemony.
Finally, a typical female inmate in South Africa is incarcerated for housebreaking and/or stealing/shoplifting. Where there is large-scale poverty and where unemployment levels vary from 40% upwards (Murray, 1995), then theft and burglary, although certainly not to be condoned, are seen in a somewhat different light from the way that societies with welfare systems in post-industrial societies see such perpetrators of crime.