by Son of Khoi
Part 3 of Bearing Witness: Firsthand Accounts of Incarceration
Series curated by Dr. Baz Dreisinger
Opportunities for incarcerated persons to achieve education has made great strides in the South African correctional system. We students are grateful for the Ndlovu vs. DCS case Constitutional Court outcome, which allowed us to use our personal laptops in our cells/rooms. Correctional Centres are exempted from compensation should anything happen to the devices, and justice-affected individuals must maintain them. Strict rules regarding the content viewed on the laptop are also stipulated within the ruling. Use of the laptop is strictly for academic purposes: Research, typing, reading. These rules are fair.
However, since more persons of colour started obtaining their own devices, lower-ranking security staff started to complain, saying that the laptop is a security risk. Is it a security risk if it is there for educational purposes? One day whilst we were waiting in the assembly to go to the university classroom, the Section Head of the education section of the prison told a student, “Don’t let that little laptop go to your head.” A comment like that and the way he said it was clearly a statement proving that he is clearly jealous or does not approve of justice-affected persons using a laptop. We are at university in a highly stressful, prison environment. At least assignments can be typed in the room and research can be done. Access to prescribed books is expensive, so we rely mostly on the internet for information. Internet access can only be obtained in the university classroom, which is excellent, given the circumstances. But now we are being witch-hunted. The laptop must be available for inspection at any given time and that is a rule I do not oppose, if the student is qualified and knows what he or she is doing.
But suddenly, the person who is bettering themself inside the walls of a correctional centre becomes the enemy of correctional officers. The strange thing is that the hatred does not come from high-ranking officials, but from low-ranking ones. Many of my fellow students who have graduated in prison and are now on the outside and still on parole are working based on the qualifications obtained in prison. They are earning money and living without need or want, legally. Shouldn’t correctional officials be happy for them? Instead, they despise them.
At a recent event, in which some of our comrades in education came to a church service to motivate us, two high-ranking members and one member of the church came to listen to the success stories shared by the speakers: a formerly incarcerated qualified accountant and a transport insurance underwriter manager. One of them is married to a beautiful lady without a criminal record and she is a cardio-physiologist.
The struggle continues, even though we are being guarded by our own kind — by the same people I could have grown up with. My kids probably play with their children at the same school. It is sad to see how the injustices of the past still lurk in the mind of the falsely liberated. It all leads me to this conclusion: Those who are supposed to “rehabilitate” need rehabilitation themselves. You can rehabilitate a broken leg or arm. My mind is not broken; it does not need rehabilitation — it needs education to make informed decisions.
ALUTA CONTINUA! WE SHALL OVERCOME…
About the Series:
Bearing Witness: Firsthand Accounts of Incarceration, is intended to highlight first-person accounts of those who have experienced incarceration. It is curated by Dr. Baz Dreisinger, Founder and Executive Director of Incarceration Nations Network, a global prison reform and justice reimagining organization.
About the Collection:
Lived Places Publishing is proud to partner with Dr. Baz Dreisinger’s organization to bring you a collection that aims to broaden the scope of real people’s storytelling in Carceral Studies.
The most knowledgeable experts on any government’s justice system are the people who have endured it. The Incarceration Nations Network Collection (LPP/INN) delivers the stories of and by people who have experienced prison firsthand and worldwide and are thus living witnesses to the global catastrophe known as mass incarceration.
Recognizing that the act of bearing witness can take many forms this collection seeks academic memoirs, essay collections, poetry collections, and other forms of ethnographic and autoethnographic tellings that expose the intersection of identity and place. Recognizing, too, that mass incarceration is a global phenomenon, the collection welcomes writers from across the globe and seeks to publish in multiple languages through translation rights and emerging tools.
Dr. Baz Dreisinger is Founder and Executive Director of Incarceration Nations Network, a global prison reform and justice reimagining organization. She is also a Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York; author of the critically acclaimed book Incarceration Nations: A Journey to Justice in Prisons Around the World (published in translation in China, Japan, Taiwan, Italy and in Spanish); founder of John Jay’s groundbreaking Prison-to-College Pipeline program; 2018 Global Fulbright Scholar and current Fulbright Scholar Specialist. Dr. Baz speaks regularly about justice issues on international media and in myriad settings around the world.
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