Durban - Prison officials are left with more questions than answers as to how notorious escape artist Ananias Mathe planned to execute his latest jailbreak attempt at the Ebongweni maximum security prison in Kokstad.
His bid for freedom through a prison cell window was discovered by correctional officers who were doing the rounds on September 19.
Prison officials, led by close to 100 members of the emergency support team, raided cells on Thursday looking for contraband, but none was found.
Nombuso Mkhize, the regional head of Correctional Services responsible for safety, did not mince her words about the embarrassment that had been brought on by the latest attempt.
“This is the facility of the last resort - any escape would be unthinkable. We have a community that we have to keep safe,” she said.
She conceded that they were worried about the escape attempt but said she was confident that Mathe would not have been successful.
Inside Mathe’s prison cell, his determination to escape was clear. He had removed the ventilator in his room and removed some parts inside. He managed to smash a window, sneaked out his hand and tried to loosen the window from the outside with an Allen key.
He also managed to saw a steel window inside his cell to make it bigger, allegedly using a hacksaw.
But no tools were recovered, and he was not talking, leading to growing concern from officials that he had received assistance.
“We still do not know what he used, but our investigation will look into all that,” said Mkhize.
She said the department planned to strengthen security around Mathe.
They were planning to rotate him from one cell to the next so he did not have time to make further attempts. A senior manager had been assigned to closely monitor Mathe and to prevent any further security breaches. Had Mathe managed to break through the window, he would have had to jump down from the third floor to the ground to land in the courtyard.
From the courtyard, he would have had to go through three electric perimeter fences and escape detection by correctional officers patrolling the grounds before securing his freedom.
The opinions of correctional officers differed. Some believed there was no chance of Mathe’s escaping.
“He was wasting his time. There was no way of him fleeing,” said one guard.
Another differed, saying: “Had he been able to get out of the window, he would have been gone. This prison has a big yard and where would you start to look? An hour’s head start would make a huge difference. We would have needed to bring dogs to find him and once he made it out the gate he would have been gone.”.
In 2009 Mathe was sentenced to 54 years’ imprisonment, with a minimum term of 43 years. He was found guilty on 64 of 71 charges including rape, attempted rape, attempted murder, robbery and theft.
The Mercury