Rapist tells of sex in jail
2004-02-18 15:13
Pretoria - A convicted rapist recounted on Wednesday how he was repeatedly violated in the Pretoria Central Prison.
"I need assistance as I am now sick and these prisoners who sodomised me are all released," John Ngwako said in an affidavit presented in Pretoria to the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison maladministration.
In the document, Ngwako claimed he was sodomised by three fellow inmates one after the other in October 2002. This happened in a cell on one of his assailants' beds.
"I was scared as I saw they were going to kill me," he said.
He reported the matter to prison authorities, and the three men were arrested. He heard last July that the case was thrown out of court.
"I do not know why, as I didn't testify against them."
Ngwako claimed he was not given medical treatment and was kept in an isolation cell for four months after the alleged rapes.
"Now I am sick, I have unknown diseases," the affidavit states.
"I was informed by the doctor not to sit in the sun as I am allergic to it."
Ngwako was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment in April 2001 for rape.
Another witness before the commission, Jacob Maartens, was accused on Wednesday of lying in testimony about corrupt warders.
Venereal disease
Maartens, a former Pretoria Local Prison inmate, testified on Tuesday that he was repeatedly raped between November 2001 and January the following year while awaiting trial.
He claimed he had suffered from a serious infection resulting from a venereal disease he contracted from the rapes.
Maartens was asked by Benedict Ndaba, for warders Richard Makhanya and Moses Malisa, why his allegations against them were not contained in his original affidavit.
Among other things, he claimed he had to pay Makhanya if he wanted to use the telephone or receive visitors. He said he did not complain because Makhanya had threatened to have him moved to another section.
He also claimed that Makhanya allowed known rapists in jail to move freely among other prisoners.
Maartens further alleged that Malisa had refused to take him to medical staff after he was raped, and declined him access to departmental investigators to lay a complaint.
"I put it to you that what you testified today about Messrs. Malisa and Makhanya is not true," Ndaba said.
"That is why their names are not mentioned in your affidavit, even though you said that you knew them well."
Maartens denied he was lying.
The hearing continues.
- SAPA