I Was in Prison and You Visited Me ...

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Written July 2020

A few weeks ago, and shortly after lockdown started I wrote a few lines, introducing them with a comparison of living on death-row and lockdown. Some might have thought I was anticipating my own end. I wasn't, but anyhow here I am - still alive, and well. 

Jails have never been my favourite place. As a boy I would pass Port Elizabeth's North End Jail with its large rough stone wall. I'd heard the gallows were there. I couldn't bear to think of it, even though I was a regular listener to the weekly radio programme: Consider Your Verdict. Even if becoming a lawyer was one of my options as a future career, and even if my verdict was 'guilty' at the end of the radio programme, the thought of execution appalled me. I welcomed the abolition of the death penalty. 

I've been inside a few prisons since then: Christmas carolling with a Salvation Army band, and accompanying a father-in-law for Sunday afternoon visits to lead a worship service: Cape Town’s Roeland Street and Pollsmoor among them. 

I'd seen prisoners detained n Zambia in the 70s, their hands through bars and handcuffed outside them. Then there was the small room attached to the Chikankata Leprosy Settlement allocated as an overnight jail for offenders. One morning we awoke to find the detainee had escaped by pushing up the corrugated iron roof. This was no top security prison. With this degree of ingenuity, we thought, he merited his freedom. That's the last we saw of him. Never mind his Leprosy! 

I wondered whether I'd be locked up myself when In 1979 after an extensive search of our home, I was herded off 40 miles away to the Mazabuka police station, a pocket-sized version of Thomas A'Kempis The Imitation of Christ and a toothbrush in my safari suit jacket - just in case. I found out in course of the interrogation that none other than the president himself had ordered my 'arrest', suspected of collaboration with the Rhodesian forces who'd made forays across the Zambezi. No charge was laid, and that was the end of the story. But it was an unsettling experience that probably led to our transfer to the UK in 1980. 

A visit to friends in Brussels during those years took us to nearby Breendonk. Belgium was not spared the horrors of the holocaust. This concentration camp still stands, symbolic of the suffering, the torture and death of so many victims as Nazi barbarity sank to the vilest depths of humanity. How could they? 

1994 took us on a brief visit to Singapore - a Leprosy Mission assessment of their Evaluation Unit and then a conference. We stayed in an apartment just opposite Changi prison. Here prisoners of war had been detained by the Japanese. We knew one of them personally - Stan Cottrill. We visited the small outdoor chapel with a few backless benches where some had met. We found his name inscribed in a book of remembrance. He held no grudge against his captors. Alienation or revenge would have been entirely understandable. Instead forgiveness prevailed and relationships were nurtured. What character!

It was maybe ten years later we paid a visit to Robben Island. This had once been where people suffering from Leprosy had been detained. Little evidence of that remains. Then it became the prison where political prisoners were incarcerated. Robert Sobukwe, founder of the Pan Africanist Congress, had been there. Anti-apartheid activist, Denis Brutus, had been there. I'd appreciated some of his poetry in earlier years. A Simple Lust appealed to me as he admitted in his Letters to Martha that much as he appreciated the memory of her, he needed her close by. Even in these days of lockdown I'm glad I have someone to hug. Our guide had been detained there too. The most famous of Robben Island's prisoners was Nelson Mandela, of course. We peeped into his cell, saw the exercise yard, the limestone quarry where he'd worked. We stopped to add our stone to the small cairn, he'd begun on his return to the island. The isivivane, in Zulu and Xhosa tradition is a symbol of the divine presence, and of reconciliation. Here was another example of unimaginable forgiveness that shows humanity at its best. 

But that is not always the outcome. A loss of self-worth and purpose leading to despair and high levels of re-offending are all too common. A prisoner being trained to become a waiter at HMP High Down in south-west London, recently admitted to guests he had nothing worth living for. How sad. He had lost all hope of a better life. Saddled with guilt and regret, despair had set in. At least the meal was enjoyable.

But the determination to survive and the desire for freedom motivate others. It was that combination that stirred some of Alcatraz’s men to risk all in their attempts to escape. But did they survive? That lingers as my enduring memory of our visit during a week in San Francisco. 

When I meet friends such as Margaret Hay who spent years teaching prisoners, and Malcolm Webb, a prison chaplain even into retirement, I stand in admiration. They believed in the value of every person; they believed in rehabilitation and transformation. I do too.  

I may have compared our weeks and even months of lockdown with imprisonment. They bear no comparison! We have had people who have shared the experience, who’ve cared; and others who’ve kept in touch; and yet others who’ve visited. The enforced time of rest has had its benefits. I suspect we'll emerge the better for it: perhaps the cultivation of fresh hope; perhaps a rediscovery of human value - everyone’s; perhaps a redefinition of purpose. Who knows? 

But having said that I'll be glad when it's all over and we're back to 'normal'. 


June 2020.