Durban - Hundreds of South Africans released from foreign jails after completing their sentences are battling to cope with their freedom, with many unable to even scrape up flight fares to return home.
Durban man Johannes Joubert, who quit his job as a car guard to become a drug mule, is one of the lucky few. Stranded in Brazil after completing his jail term in February, he flew back on Friday, thanks to a generous donation.
Two other South Africans in similar circumstances are also hoping to return, courtesy of kindly benefactors, but for hundreds of others, there’s little prospect of them being reunited with their families any time soon – they simply cannot afford the airfare back to South Africa.
According to the Department of International Relations and Co-oper-ation (Dirco), there are 969 South Africans in foreign jails and about 60 percent of them are serving time for drug-related crimes. They are mainly in prisons in Brazil, Thailand and Mauritius, with a few in China, said Clayson Monyela, a Dirco deputy director-general and spokesman.
While the department said it was aware of released persons awaiting deportation, some countries, including Brazil, expect foreign nationals to leave the country under their own steam.
Monyela said the South African government would not pay for released prisoners’ return flights home. “No government would do that, as it wouldn’t be sustainable.”
Lynette Welgemoed, from Locked Up in a Foreign Country, an NGO assisting South Africans convicted in foreign countries, has been liaising with a Brazilian woman, Silvanete dos Santos, who runs a women’s shelter in Sao Paulo and has been helping stranded female South African ex-prisoners.
“As there are no halfway houses or shelters for the men, many of them have been living on the streets,” said Welgemoed. “Silvanete has been trying to help by providing them with meals, but she is running out of funds. We were able to find the three South Africans we’re helping through Silvanete, whom we speak to through a Portuguese translator.”
Welgemoed said Joubert cried when she told him he was coming home. “He’s been living on the streets and surviving on one meal a week,” she said. “They are like scared little children when they are released from prison.”
The ticket for the other South African man could not be booked, she said, as he accepted a job out of town to install Christmas lights to raise funds for his trip back to SA. A South African benefactor who has relocated to Dubai agreed to purchase two return air tickets, priced at about R10 180 each, and Locked Up has been appealing for donations to buy the third ticket.
Welgemoed, whose daughter served time in a Peruvian prison, estimated there were 500 South Africans stranded in foreign countries, saying that many of their families contacted Locked Up for help. She said there were approximately 20 South Africans still in Brazil, and many of them were unable to return home because their families could not afford the fare.
Temporary passports in Brazil cost R250 each, she said, and a return ticket costs about R10 180, which is cheaper than the approximately R17 000 for a one-way ticket. They are still raising funds for the South African woman’s ticket and are R6 000 short.
On average, Welgemoed said about six families contact them every month for help with South Africans jailed for smuggling drugs into foreign countries. Both Welgemoed and Locked Up’s founder, Patricia Gerber, whose son Johann is serving an 11-year sentence for drug smuggling in Mauritius, said Dirco did not have accurate figures of the number of South Africans in foreign jails.
“They estimate it to be in the hundreds, but we believe it is actually in the thousands, based on the number of families that contact us,” said Welgemoed. “The problem is that many SA drug mules travel on a foreign passport, so the department would not want to get involved.”
“As far as we know, from October 2011 to October 2012, 14 South Africans were arrested in Asia for drug smuggling alone,” said Gerber, who raised the issue of the government introducing a prisoner transfer agreement. This would allow for foreigners to be sent home to serve their sentence.
Welgemoed said the Brazilian government did not deport foreigners once they completed serving their jail sentences, and expected their families to pay for their return.
“South Africa pays approximately R470 million to keep foreigners in South African prisons, and once these prisoners complete their sentence, government pays for them to be deported, but South Africa doesn’t pay for South African prisoners in foreign jails to be brought home,” she said.
Welgemoed said those stranded in Brazil were battling to survive without money. One man, who was believed to have been living on the streets, had died from malnutrition, she said, adding that others could not find jobs as they did not speak Portuguese. “But we’re not going to give up on these guys,” she added. - Daily News