Johannesburg - The SA Prisoners’ Organisation for Human Rights (Sapohr) has raised concern about the quality of food served to prisoners at Leeuwkop Prison.
Leeuwkop is a large correctional facility in Sandton.
This comes after images circulated on social media of the “deteriorating” standard of food.
Seen in the images is what seems to be pieces of cooked maize meal floating in sauce with a vegetable salad and pieces of meat sprinkled all over.
The food is seen served on icecream tubs lids, while the bread is served on a dishcloth.
Sapohr president Golden Miles Bhudu says this kind of food was believed to be deliberately served to frustrate inmates.
“Chapter 2 of the Bill of Rights, Sub-section 2, paragraph e, states that inmates should be housed in conditions that are liveable and with dignity at the expense of the state. This includes liveable accommodation, good health care, decent food and clean sanitation facilities.”
Leeuwkop is known for being primarily a maximum-security prison where inmates who are deemed a threat to society are kept.
Correctional Services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said they were in possession of all the images that circulated on social media, and it was an “old fabrication by an organisation purporting to be representing inmates”.
He said: “We have been clear that this is nowhere near reality.”
Bhudu said he believed the information sent to him from prisoners, and that the quality of the food was not the only issue in this prison.
He said many of the prisoners did not have warm clothes during the cold weather, and the prison often ran out of medicine, compromising the prisoners’ health.
“Prisoners have reached out to the organisation and said they would rather die than be forced to eat this type of food.
“They say they have been living in circumstances that are inhuman and cannot struggle to imagine a life worse than there is now.”
The Star