Constitution Hill: from prejudice to justice

Posted by Madibeng Kgwete: 16 August 2010

Want to talk forgiveness, racial tolerance, social cohesion and justice? Okay, good – just don’t go on a tour of Constitution Hill. Go somewhere else.

Admittedly, though, the tour guides are good at calming down tempers. And the skill occasionally comes handy during a tour of this national heritage site.

Built on the site of a former prison complex, the Constitution Hill invokes painful memories of South Africa’s past and brings into sharp perspective the brutality of the apartheid system.

To have the Constitutional Court of a free and democratic South Africa based at the site of this apartheid prison complex seems almost paradoxical, for here you have prejudice and justice under one roof.

The tour guides have a line for it: “We’ve taken the bricks that used to imprison us to build a future for our country, to guard against the possibility of the injustices that happened here recurring.”

But that hardly makes up for the humiliation suffered here by black prisoners, some of whom were common law criminals, but many more of whom were political prisoners.

The crimes committed by inmates at this complex varied from shoplifting to one being a member of a banned political organisation, such as the ANC, PAC or the SACP. Some were arrested for not carrying “passes”, others for brewing traditional beer whilst black (a crime during apartheid).

The reasons for the hundreds imprisoned at the Number Four Prison varied, and the variation also extended to the way inmates were treated: if you were black, humiliation and torture awaited you; if you were white, relative luxury.

The intention seems to have been to break the spirit of black resistance to apartheid, but some mavericks within the black anti-apartheid movement upheld their opposition to the system, despite the harsh and unjust punishment.

Robert Sobukwe’s words of resistance are immortalised in the former prison: “We refuse to plead because our contention is that the law under which we are charged is a law made exclusively by the white man, specifically for the oppression of blacks.”

The story of the Number Four Prison, including the discrimination inside, is better told by the former inmates themselves. These include such famous political figures as Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Robert Sobukwe, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Helen Joseph and more.

Others, like former inmate Cornelius Manoto, are not well known, but their stories are not less alarming: “To eat from rusted containers was terrible; not to speak of the treatment from warders. Every morning we would stand in the shade feeling cold not even seeing the sunshine. In the court we will be stripped naked and subjected to utter humiliation of the worst order.”

Barbara Hogan, another former inmate, explains the racial preferential treatment: “This cell (in the white section of the Women’s Jail) was like none other I had ever known. A Van Gogh interior, wooden floors, sash windows, three simple beds, a table and chairs. Freezing cold, certainly, but compared to police cells, absolute luxury.”

Those who envisaged the concept of a Constitutional Court at the site of an apartheid prison complex say the project symbolizes South Africa’s intricate and painful journey from apartheid to freedom.

The transition was unprecedented in its efficiency, but the wounds are still fresh, and a lamentation by a former inmate betrays the apparent peace that exists between our past and our present.

Writing in a book on the Constitution Hill project, Mapping Memory, former inmate John Moeketsi Mahapa says: “What we fought for all those years has not been achieved. Our people still live in appalling poverty, there are no jobs, people have no houses and worst of all, many of our people are landless.”

NB: Article written following a tour of the Constitutional Hill on Friday, 13 August 2010.