A COSATU statement in early October condemning the role of G4S in a South African prison scandal has led to hard questions regarding prison privatisation the role of budding capitalist mercenaries globally. The beginning of the War on Terror in 2001 cast hired-guns and private military contractors (PMC’s), mainly Blackwater (now Academi) to the spotlight, and their subsequent behaviour, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan made them infamous and notorious. Has our own War against Crime made us complacent and apathetic toward prisoner torture? South African’s don’t seem affronted enough that Brit-Danish company G4S, the world’s largest security company is again under fire for allegedly torturing, electroshocking and forcibly drugging inmates of a South African prison in Mangaung.
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The allegations emerged in October, when our Department of Correctional Services announced that it was taking over the management of 3000 inmates at Mangaung Correctional Centre as "the contractor [G4S] has lost effective control of the facility”. The decision was provoked by a series of stabbings, riots, strikes and a hostage taking in the prison. At the time G4S had fired more than 300 Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) members for staging a strike.
COSATU’s statement extract:
“Astounding that government has opted to privatise an institution that is ought to rehabilitate social delinquents. It ought to be a national scandal that private companies are being handed huge amounts of taxpayers’ money to profit from this rehabilitation process. It is even worse when these companies sack workers for raising issues regarding the conditions that they work under.
It is worrying that G4S, a British-Danish private security company that provides services and equipment to Israeli prisons, checkpoints, the Apartheid Wall and the Israeli police has now been courted by our government to milk tax payer’s money in order to finance its controversial operations in the apartheid state of Israel. G4S’s modus operandi is indicative of two of the most worrying aspects of neoliberal capitalism and Israeli apartheid; the ideology of “security” and the increasing privatisation of what have been traditionally state run sectors. Security, in this context, does not imply security for everyone, but rather, when one looks at the major clients of G4S Security (banks, governments, corporations etc) it becomes evident that when G4S says it is “Securing your World”, as the company slogan goes, it is referring to a world of exploitation, repression, occupation and racism.”
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Based on a year-long investigation, the Wits Justice Project (WJP) alleged cases of mistreatment and miscarriages of justice in Mangaung.
For example, a video shot by the prison's emergency security team (EST), which is legally tasked to film all its actions, shows inmate Bheki Dlamini, serving a 21-year sentence for armed robbery, being injected involuntarily. “I am not a donkey," Dlamini shouts loudly, pleading "No, no, no" as five men hold him down and drag him to a room where they wrestle him, and then a nurse is called. A staff member at the prison hospital, who requested anonymity, has alleged that inmates were injected with anti-psychotic drugs Clopixol Depot, Risperdal, Etomine and Modecate, which have life-threatening side effects and cause memory loss, muscle rigidity and strokes.
According to WJP, these drugs have been used at the prison up to five times a week, sometimes on inmates, who showed no sign of being psychotic. In the case of Dlamini, according to medical files, he was not a psychotic or schizophrenic and did not need any anti-psychotic drugs.
"Dlamini had complained to a warder that he did not like the Vienna sausages they served him; he demanded that the warder should bring him 'real meat'," said Egon Oswald, a human rights lawyer, who represents Dlamini. “The warder told him the emergency security team would deal with him.”
According to Dlamini’s accounts cited by WJP, the nurse, who was called to give him an injection, refused to do so as she claimed it was unlawful to inject someone without a prescription.
However, the "Ninjas", as the emergency security team is dubbed, forced her to inject.
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G4S is a British multinational security services company headquartered in Crawley, United Kingdom. It is the world's largest security company measured by revenues and has operations in around 125 countries. With over 620,000 employees, it is the world's third-largest private sector employer.
G4S supplies security equipment and services for use at Israeli prisons, checkpoints and settlements in the West Bank. It also helps to maintain Israel's prison system.
Under Israeli military law, prisoners can be detained for investigation for 60 days without access to a lawyer, which means that lawyers cannot witness interrogation methods used against their clients. All these practices and more are facilitated by G4S. In the Jalma and Maskoubieh interrogation centres, which are also serviced by G4S, not even children are spared from torture. It is in one of those centres that Palestinian detainee Arafat Jaradat was tortured to death earlier this year. There, too, Luay al-Ashqar, a Palestinian administrative detainee, became permanently paralysed in his left leg when he suffered a triple fracture in his spine during his detention. [Source]
The scope of G4S’ operations and profits in the Arab world is nearly six times the size of its operations and profits in the Jewish state. Its market share in Saudi alone is about 10 times its share in Israel. BDS campaigners have raised their outrage that Palestinian pilgrims to Hajj were greeted by a company that assists in their repression – and even torture – under the Israeli occupation regime. This is not the first time that the Saudi government has hired the private security firm. Most of the leaked reports indicate that security for the Hajj season since 2010 has been entrusted to al-Majal G4S, an affiliate of the parent company G4S.
In London in October 2010, three G4S-guards restrained and held down 46-year old Angolan deportee Jimmy Mubenga on departing British Airways flight 77, at Heathrow Airport. Security guards kept him restrained in his seat as he began shouting and seeking to resist his deportation. Police and paramedics were called when Mubenga lost consciousness. The aircraft, which had been due to lift off, then returned to the terminal. Mubenga was pronounced dead later that evening. Passengers reported hearing cries of "don't do this" and "they are trying to kill me." Scotland Yard's homicide unit began an investigation after the death became categorised as "unexplained". Three private security guards, contracted to escort deportees for the Home Office, were released on bail, after having been interviewed about the incident. On 9 July 2013 an inquest jury, in a nine-to-one decision, found that Mubenga's death was caused by the G4S guards "using unreasonable force and acting in an unlawful manner."
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It would seem from newspaper polls that South African’s are largely in favour of torture in prisons. This would lend insight to why innocent and already freed detainees can be held and tortured indefinitely at Guantanamo without worldwide condemnation.
“Hand all prisons over to G4S! About time these f***ers get a taste of their own medicine! Let them be treated the way they treated their victims! Prison is not supposed to be a vacation! It’s supposed to be horrible! Viva G4S!”
“What I find quite ironic is that there will be an exhaustive investigation into the use of "shock treatment" and shall we say abuse of "medication”, but in the meanwhile prisons host gang rapes and regular drug use by inmates, but these practices seem to go unnoticed by everyone except the victims.”
“From a human rights perspective it is shocking, excuse the pun… But as I have personally encountered attempted muggings, know numerous family members being severely affected by brutal unnecessary crimes, like rape and murder, it is hard to feel sorry for most criminals… Maybe they should even up the voltage for some.”
Mangaung was only one of two prisons, out of the 243 correctional facilities in South Africa, which were privately run.
It is reported that the South African government had decided in 2010 not to pursue or further expand a policy of public/private partnerships in the running of prisons.
Further, despite the 2006 Prohibition of Mercenary Activities and Regulation of Certain Activities in Country of Armed Conflict Act, which came about shortly after the ill-fated 2004 attempt by a mercenary firm to effect a coup in Equatorial Guinea, aiming to prohibit South Africans from engaging in mercenary activity, between 1 500 and 2 500 South Africans are reportedly doing military-related work in Iraq. Black South African mercenaries are in demand because they blend in better with the population of Sudanese Arabs in southern Iraq and white South Africans were said to have a better reputation than their British counterparts for adapting to local cultural norms. [Source]
Important political and moral implications need to be considered before South Africa embraces the idea of contracting private military companies to serve as prison and peace-enforcers or provide national security. Worldwide, the dilemma to hire or not to hire private military companies persists; signaling huge shifts in the future identity of the State.
Radio Islam Programming
2013.10.31
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