Health
Underlying causes of cholera in Zimbabwe remain unattended to
Sokwanele Article: June 30th, 2009The video footage above shows sewage freely flowing along the perimeter of Lobengula Primary school (Bulawayo) - you can hear children shouting and playing near-by in the background.
It's cool and dry in Zimbabwe at the moment, but when the rainy season ensues, and the weather turns hot, the threat of a massive cholera epidemic looms large again. This footage, and the images included in this post, clearly show that unhygenic conditions persist.
Rubbish left uncollected alongside a road in Makokoba, a high density residential area
Zimbabwe's prisons are death-traps
Sokwanele Article: March 30th, 2009
Zimbabwe's prisoners are suffering untold horrors in Zimbabwe's jails. The State is locking them up in hell-holes, condemning them to slow starvation and possible death from nutrition-related illnesses or the vast array of other diseases they are exposed to through unhygienic conditions. Despite terrible desperation, their position as 'prisoners' means they are denied the most basic human instinct and that is to fight for survival: inmates can't beg for food from passers-by, they can't forage for wild berries in the bush, and they can't rummage through dustbins for waste food. Because of this, Zimbabwe's prisons constitute a unique and especially cruel form of torture that has both physical and psychological impacts on the people affected. In October last year, the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO) released a report noting that there are 55 prisons in Zimbabwe (including satellites), with the capacity to hold 17 000 inmates. But in October 2008 it was estimated that more than 35 000 people were in jail.
Zimbabwe's prisons are death-traps
Zimbabwe's prisoners are suffering untold horrors in Zimbabwe's jails. The State is locking them up in hell-holes, condemning them to slow starvation and possible death from nutrition-related illnesses or the vast array of other diseases they are exposed to through unhygienic conditions. Despite terrible desperation, their position as 'prisoners' means they are denied the most basic human instinct and that is to fight for survival: inmates can't beg for food from passers-by, they can't forage for wild berries in the bush, and they can't rummage through dustbins for waste food. Because of this, Zimbabwe's prisons constitute a unique and especially cruel form of torture that has both physical and psychological impacts on the people affected.
In October last year, the Zimbabwe Association for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of the Offender (ZACRO) released a report noting that there are 55 prisons in Zimbabwe (including satellites), with the capacity to hold 17 000 inmates. But in October 2008 it was estimated that more than 35 000 people were in jail.
