Reuters
Leanne Jansen and Kyle Venktess
UNTIL SA signed prisoner exchange agreements, locals imprisoned in other countries had no hope of serving their sentences on home soil.
The Correctional Services Ministry confirmed yesterday that no such agreement existed, and could not say when ongoing negotiations to develop such a tool would be concluded.
Locked Up, an organisation which campaigns for the rights of drug traffickers jailed outside SA’s borders, believes that the perpetrators of such “soft crimes” and their families were being failed by the government in its humanitarian obligations towards them. It said the lack of such agreements contributed to prison overcrowding, and that housing foreign prisoners costs taxpayers R140 million a year.
Locked Up co-director Belinda West said 1 300 South Africans, including more than 700 convicted drug mules, were in foreign jails.
West was speaking following the execution in China this week of former Wentworth woman Janice Linden.
West co-founded Locked Up in response to the 2008 incarceration of a friend on drug-trafficking charges in Venezuela. West said 30 South Africans were currently serving time in Mauritius on drug-trafficking charges, and another 400 in Brazil.
West said drug mules were people either with addictions, or in dire financial straits. Female mules appeared to be an emerging trend, with syndicates often exploiting desperate single mothers, and even capitalising on the fact that pregnant women cannot pass through X-ray machines at airports.
“Look in the mirror; that’s what a drug mule looks like,” West said, adding that drug mules were at the mercy of the arresting country.
Trauma
“You’re made to sign statements in a language you don’t understand… families often can’t afford to fly overseas, or send them money for food, clothes and medicine. It’s emotional and financial trauma.”
Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula’s spokesman, Sonwabo Mbananga, said officials were working on a protocol to facilitate prisoner transfers, but would not commit to a timeline.
Mbananga said such a framework did not oblige countries to send SA prisoners back home, but provided a means for transfer negotiations to take place.
