Constitution Hill - Number Four Prison

From Soweto, we used the City Sightseeing bus again to visit Constitution Hill, a living museum that tells the story of South Africa’s journey to democracy. The site is a former prison and military fort that bears testament to South Africa’s turbulent past and, today, is home to the country’s Constitutional Court, which endorses the rights of all citizens.

We had a really interesting guided tour.

The tour started in 'Number Four', the prison for blacks, which, unbelievably, given the state of it, was in use until as recently as 1983! Conditions for the inmates were grim. Men were incarcerated in communal cells designed for 30 prisoners, but which regularly housed as many as 60. They only had thin sleeping mats and blankets, and space was so limited that prisoners had to sleep head to toe. There was just one toilet in the corner of each of these cells.

The prisoners' diet depended on their race. Black inmates had to survive on very little. There were no chairs or tables, so the men had to eat their meals squatting on the floor in an open area next to communal toilets, which regularly got blocked and overflowed. Disease was rife.

Cruelty and humiliation were the standard behaviour of prison warders. The few black warders were treated almost as badly as the inmates by their white colleagues.

No distinction was made in terms of the 'crime' a man had committed. A black man arrested for not carrying his pass could be jailed without trial and accommodated in a cell with murderers and rapists.

There were a large number of isolation cells to punish inmates who were deemed to have broken the rules. Political prisoners were housed in these as a matter of course. These airless, dark, tiny cells were supposed to be used for a maximum of 30 days at a time, but some men were held in them for over a year.

Unbelievably, despite the grim conditions, prisoners found ways to entertain and occupy themselves. Singing was always popular, as was 'blanket sculpture', creating artwork by folding and shaping blankets. There is an exhibition today to show examples.

Number Four was once home to prisoners such as Mahatma Gandhi (jailed several times between 1908 and 1913 for leading the Passive Resistance Movement against pass laws for Asians), Joe Slovo, Robert Sobukwe, and the students of the 1976 Soweto uprising.Read more