Brigene Young was 20 years old when she was arrested for smuggling heroin into Mauritius in the heels of her shoes.
Now, after a wait of more than three years in Mauritius's Beau-Bassin prison, the 23-year-old has finally learnt the cost of carrying 896,9g of heroin into the country: another seven years in jail.
Young, who was sentenced more than a week ago, is one of 28 South Africans currently languishing in Mauritian jails after being caught in possession of drugs.
The largely female contingent of South African prisoners can wait up to four years before they are sentenced - a situation that prompted 11 women prisoners to go on a hunger strike earlier this year.
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'They can't even plan their future' The Saturday Star has established that South African Teressa Phewa spent three years in a Mauritian jail without being brought to trial. She was released in December last year.
Phewa spoke on behalf of the prisoners who went on a hunger strike for more than two weeks in February, stating that they had done so to demand that their cases be dealt with by the Mauritian authorities.
"They can't even plan their future, they don't know what is going on in their lives," she said.
And it seems that the conditions under which female prisoners are living have worsened. The Saturday Star has established that at least one female South African prisoner, who was arrested in 2001 and is yet to be sentenced, is currently being kept in the Beau-Bassin jail hospital because of ill health.
And, in an apparent response to a fight that broke out between South African and Mauritian female prisoners, Beau-Bassin authorities moved eight female South African prisoners into the dungeon section of the jail in March.
Marius Mey, the fiancé of 27-year-old prisoner Michelle Roux, said the women had no beds, were not allowed to shower and had been forced to use a chamber pot as a toilet.
Like many of her fellow accused drug mules, Roux has claimed that the heroin found in her suitcase in June 2003 was planted there without her knowledge.
Similarly, Young reportedly told Mauritian drug authorities that, prior to her departure from South Africa, a friend had given her a parcel to deliver to a hotel on the east side of the island. She said she had no idea that the parcel contained drug-crammed shoes.
In letters to the support group Family and Friends of South Africans Detained Abroad, most prisoners stress that not knowing the length of their sentence is worse than facing long-term imprisonment.
While waiting to be sentenced, Capetonian Johan van Wyk wrote: "I wish this was over. To think that I might be in prison the next 10 years is not a very appealing thought, but how can you prepare yourself when you don't know what to expect?"
Van Wyk was arrested with fellow South African Arlene Parbhoo in August 2003.
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This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on June 10, 2006
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