Archaeologists often say that the most telling discoveries about the past are made in sifting through the contents of the rubbish bins of ancient civilizations. With a macabre twist, the same might be said of what Zimbabwe's mortuaries reveal today - of the sad state of society, and more particularly of the country's prisons.

Take the Mpilo mortuary in Bulawayo for example. Those unfortunate enough to have cause to visit the place report that bodies are piled up like so much firewood. The refrigeration system having failed some time ago there is no alternative, and the resulting stench is appalling. A recent visitor to the mortuary counted in excess of fifteen bodies piled up on the floor. Judging by the identical grey blankets in which they were wrapped they were all from the prisons. A few bodies were not in fact covered at all. They lay stark naked, without a shred of dignity or decency in death. A small boy, a green bomber graduate, now working as a mortuary attendant, explained that the prisons were giving them a real problem in the number of bodies delivered which were unclaimed.

The same picture is readily confirmed by a visit to the nearby Luveve cemetery. Attendants there report that many bodies from the prisons are given a pauper's funeral and buried together in mass graves.

Follow the trail of death back from cemetery and mortuary to the prison house, and the cause of this distressing situation becomes plain to see. A senior officer at Khami Prison confirmed recently that on average 15 prisoners are dying each week of Tuberculosis (T.B). March was a particularly bad month in which the prison recorded 130 deaths. T.B. is a contagious disease to which the weak or malnourished are particularly prone. At certain stages of the disease patients should be isolated from others. In Khami Prison however such is the congestion and over-crowding of facilities that infected patients mix freely with others, creating a situation in which the disease can spread like wildfire. To make matters even worse the prison is short of the drugs required to treat T.B. and does not have the adequate food supplies that should be given to those receiving the drugs. All things considered the appallingly high mortality rate at the prison should not occasion any surprise.

Nor is this the full extent of the serious health hazards faced at Zimbabwe's prisons today. The prison officer at Khami who spoke of the menace of T.B. also revealed that homosexual rape was a huge problem. If all the cases were prosecuted, he said, the whole prison would have to be closed down.

Such is life - and death - in the hell hole of a Zimbabwean prison in the year 2004.