Former prisoner and South Africa’s struggle stalwart, Barbara Horgan, shared her life experience while incarcerated at the old women’s jail in Braamfontein during the apartheid days.
Briefing the media at the very same institution, now converted into Constitutional Hill, Horgan said the facility has changed and it even looks much better and beautiful.
Horgan was incarcerated in 1983 and spent over 10 years in prison after being charged with treason for her activities against the apartheid government.
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“This place has been beautified and it does not reflect women’s plights during the time when we were here as prisoners,” said Horgan.
Horgan spoke about the time when she first came to the facility after appearing in court and sentenced to the institution.
“Coming here for the first time after appearing in court the security officers were told that I’m an evil person and I’m not allowed to mingle with other prisoners.
“Prisoners were not allowed to make contact with me and I was not allowed to walk where everyone used to, and I had to walk around at the back – I was in complete separation.”
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Horgan described prison there as one place where prisoners suffered more exclusion and their rights as humans were ignored and not even responded to.
She said they mostly lived in fear of prison staff who were also forced to treat prisoners in very tyrant ways that are not even describable.
The struggle stalwart spoke about a ‘Jewish’ doctor who was in charge of the sick patients in prison saying he was a tyrant.
She also talked about a warden who ill-treated prisoners and described her as an evil person.
“They used to call her Satan and she was a Satan.
“One day, some prisoners went outside for their exercise, and unthinkingly, this woman went back to her cell carrying a little stone playing with it and this warden stopped her and charged her with carrying a weapon.”
The woman was stripped naked and locked in a tiny cell and put on a rice diet – water from the rice that you lived on and we used to call it starvation diet, said Horgan.
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She said anyone who was known to be suicidal would be punished the same way.
Hogan also took a tour to the gravesides of Helen Joseph, Lilian Ngoyi, Rahima Moosa and Albertina Sisulu, whose centenary is being celebrated this year.
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