Durban - Three convicted South African drug mules, two of whom have been paroled, want to come back home amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Nomtha Vinolia Tapi, from Uitenhage in the Eastern Cape, feared that she might die of the virus if she remained in an overcrowded shelter in Argentina – a country where the death toll is over 200.
Tapi, the daughter of the late general secretary of the National Union of Metal Workers of SA Mbuyiselo Ngwenda, said she and many others stranded in Brazil could not afford flight tickets to return home.
She said they were also excluded from the repatriation programme for citizens stuck in South America.
Tapi, a single mother, was sentenced to five years at Feminina Butantan prison after she was found in possession of 2kg of cocaine during a bus raid in 2015. She was travelling from Campo Grande to Sao Paulo to deliver drugs. After her release from jail in 2018, she stabbed someone during a bar brawl and fled to Buenos Aires in Argentina.
Tapi said the lockdown had stopped her from earning a living to support her two-year-old son after she was abandoned by her boyfriend. She said because of financial distress she had attempted suicide and tried to kill her son too. Her son has since been taken away from her for his protection.
“I am appealing to the South African embassy to help us return home, but I am not willing to leave without my son,” she said.
The other case is that of a 30-year-old ex-prisoner from Soweto, who asked not to be named. She was released on parole four years ago.
She was sentenced to six years after being found with 1kg of cocaine and was sent to a prison in Brazil in August 2013. But a year later she was released on medical parole. She blamed a Nigerian man whom she met in Gauteng for her troubles.
She said the Brazilian government paid for her rent and utilities but there was not enough for food.
“I always beg for a bowl of rice from neighbours. I am diabetic and cannot inject myself on an empty stomach,” she said.
Then there is the case of Thobeka Wawi Mathanga, from the Eastern Cape, whose daughter is serving time in a prison in Mozambique. She said the lockdown meant that she could not visit her at the Cadiea Civil de Maputo prison.
Mathanga, 62, said she and her 16-year-old granddaughter had to travel for two days to get to Mozambique where her daughter is serving a 16-year sentence after she was found with 1kg of cocaine at Maputo airport three years ago.
Her daughter was returning from India when she got caught.
“I am so depressed and heartbroken that we cannot go. I lie awake at night thinking about her safety,” she said.
Patricia Gerber, who heads Locked Up, an NGO that assists South Africans who have been convicted in a foreign country, said she was disappointed that government could not assist the ex-prisoners.
“Brazilian prisons are always overstuffed and dangerous just like here. We appeal to the embassy to help repatriate the ex-prisoners. It serves no purpose for them to be in a country they do not belong to,” said Gerber.
The Department of International Relations and Co-operation did not respond by time of publication.
Department of International Relations and Co-operation spokesperson Lunga Ngqengelele said the embassy had no obligation to pay flight expenses for ex-prisoners.
“Sometimes parolees on their volition choose to remain in the country until their papers expire. The repatriation process due to Covid-19 was not opened to everyone but it was for students, those employed overseas and business people with travelling insurances,” said Ngqengelele.