Deviance, Punishment and Logics of Subjectification during Apartheid: Insane, Political and Common-law Prisoners in a South African Gaol

Abstract

In 1994, with the upcoming first non-racial democratic elections in South Africa, riots broke out in numerous prisons throughout the country. Common-law prisoners, political inmates who had not yet been granted amnesty and offenders kept in psychiatric hospitals claimed their right to vote, challenging in the same process the boundaries of South African citizenship, which was being redefined at the time. This article focuses on Pollsmoor Prison and on the Maximum Security Ward of Valkenberg Mental Hospital, both located in the Western Cape. Punishment is defined as the expression of a distinct regime of power-knowledge disseminated by local authorities such as judges and psychiatrists. The aim is to explore the extent to which the implementation of the categories of insane, political and criminal prisoners during apartheid was based on the delimitation of deviancy as issued by diverse authorities of power. These discursive categories were performative, to the extent that they described, defined and created their object in the same movement. They also constituted the framework in which resistance and initiative could be formulated within a total institution. This article therefore analyses, from the end of the 1960s to the democratic transition in the 1990s, how the apartheid regime tried to govern by circumscribing the subjectivity of the non-white populations through the use of intricate dynamics of punishment.

Notes

¹ Manuscripts and Archives (MA), University of Cape Town (UCT), BC997, A3: Draft of an article sent to the Sunday Tribune by the Supreme Court Judge J.H. Steyn, 25 February 1971.

^*This work would not have been possible without the agreement of the South African Department of Correctional Services. I am grateful that its members have allowed me to consult the archives of Pollsmoor. I also wish to thank all the people I have interviewed for the precious information they provided.

² E. Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968).

³ Interview with Mr Stevens, prisoner at Pollsmoor, 28 February 2008. In this study, pseudonyms are used throughout, as some interviewees have requested to remain anonymous, and others have given information that could have critical repercussions.

⁴ Historical Papers, Witwatersrand University (HP), A2084, Helen Suzman papers, Aa1.2. Representations made on behalf of prisoners, 1965–1989.

⁵ M. Foucault, ‘The Subject and Power’, in H.L. Dreyfus and P. Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 208–26.

⁶ The notion of ‘circumscribed subjectivities’ is drawn from Foucault's theory on the production of the subject by the relations of power and knowledge characterising a specific period. See M. Foucault, Surveiller et Punir (Paris, Gallimard, 1975).

⁷ H.J. Deacon, ‘Racial Segregation and Medical Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Cape Town’, Journal of Southern African Studies [hereafter JSAS], 22, 2 (June 1996), pp. 287–308.

⁸ W. Beinart, ‘Introduction: Political Violence in Southern African Historiography’, JSAS, 18, 3 (September 1992), p. 456.

⁹ A. Corbin, Le Village des Cannibales (Paris, Aubier, 1990), and C. Ginzburg, ‘Signes, traces, pistes: Racines d'un paradigme de l'indice’, Le Débat, 6 (1980), pp. 7–44.

¹⁰ F. Bernault (ed.), Enfermement, prison et châtiments en afrique: du 19e siècle à nos jours (Paris, Karthala, 1999).

¹¹ F. Wilson and M. Ramphele, Uprooting Poverty in South Africa: The South African Challenge (Cape Town, David Philip, 1989).

¹² E. Hopkins, ‘The Politics of Crime: Aggression and Control in a Colonial Context’, American Anthropologist, 75 (1973), p. 731.

¹³ M. Chanock, The Making of South African Legal Culture, 1902–1936: Fear, Favour and Prejudice (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001).

¹⁴ Deacon, ‘Racial Segregation and Medical Discourse’.

¹⁵ Rhodes House Library (RHL), NS13, SA, 610.5 s.3/1976 (3), G. Viljoen, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Penal System of the Republic of South Africa (Pretoria, 1976).

¹⁶ Throughout this article, in order to avoid using the racial categories created during apartheid, ‘blacks’ will be used, instead of ‘Africans’ and other such words, as a generic term encompassing all non-white populations.

¹⁷ W. Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (London, Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 229.

¹⁸ RHL, Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM), MSS AAM 1813, Centre Against Apartheid, ‘Repression in South Africa’, 1980.

¹⁹ Aluka, Pamphlet: SATIS, ‘Political Trials in South Africa – Judicial Instruments of Oppression’, 1985, available at http://www.aluka.org/action/doBrowse?sa = 3&sa_sel = 

²⁰ Pollsmoor Archives (PA), 1/4/2/9, Letter from a PAC prisoner to Pollsmoor Administration, November 1994.

²¹ Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report, Vol. 2, 1998, p. 11, available at http://www.info.gov.za/otherdocs/2003/trc/

²² Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa, p. 228.

²³ P. Lambley, The Psychology of Apartheid (London, Secker & Warburg, 1980).

²⁴ All South African Law Reports, S v Forbes and another [1970] 2 All SA 439 (C), available at http://www.jutalaw.co.za/

²⁵ See in particular, the reports of the following court trials: All South African Law Reports, S v Forbes and another [1970] 2 All SA 439 (C), S v Loubscher [1979] 4 ALL SA 248 (AD), S v Manupo [1991] 4 All SA 232 (C) and S v Kahita [1983] 2 All SA 451 (C), available at http://www.jutalaw.co.za/

²⁶ Interviews with Mr Buten and Mr Holler, researchers in psychology at the University of Cape Town, 9 December 2010 and 18 November 2010.

²⁷ C. Bateman, ‘The Insanity of a Criminal Justice System’, Izindaba, South African Journal of Medicine, 94, 4 (2005), pp. 208–12.

²⁸ A.-M. Marchetti, Perpétuités: Le temps infini des longues peines (Paris, Plon, 2001).

²⁹ G. Chantraine, ‘Prison, désaffiliation, stigmates. L'engrenage carcéral de “l'inutile au monde” contemporain’, Déviance et Société, 27, 4 (2003/4), pp. 363–87.

³⁰ Interview with Mr Holler.

³¹ PA, 1/2/2/1 P9-3, Transfers to and from other institutions, and PA, 1/4/2/10/1, Removal of prisoners to mental hospitals.

³² N. Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom (London, Little Brown, 1994), p. 501.

³³ Interview with Mr Walter, warder at Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison, 26/02/2008.

³⁴ Interview with Mr Hillier, warder at Pollsmoor Medium B, 26/02/2008.

³⁵ Number calculated from the national statistics provided in RHL, NS13, SA, 610.5 s.3/1976 (3), G. Viljoen, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Penal System of the Republic of South Africa (Pretoria, 1976).

³⁶ A. Dissel and S. Ellis, ‘Ambitions réformatrices et inertie du social dans les prisons sud-africaines’, in P. Artières and P. Lascoumes (eds), Gouverner, enfermer: La prison, un modèle indépassable? (Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2004), pp. 135–42.

³⁷ Foucault, Surveiller et Punir.

³⁸ Conditions denounced in Human Rights Watch, Prison Conditions in South Africa (New York, 1994), available at http://www.hrw.org/legacy/reports/1994/southafrica/ during the democratic transition and corroborated by interviews.

³⁹ A. Chauvenet, ‘Privation de Liberté et Violence: le despotisme ordinaire en prison’, Déviance et Société, 30, 3 (2006), pp. 373–88.

⁴⁰ J. Steinberg, The Number. One Man's Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2004).

⁴¹ This act regulated the prison administration until the democratic transition.

⁴² Interview with Mr. Van Tonder, warder in charge of the agricultural sector, 27/02/2008.

⁴³ The racial category ‘Asiatic’ does not appear in Pollsmoor administrative documents, due to their minority presence in prison, especially in the Western Cape. In 1969, on a national level, the distribution of prisoners per racial category was as follows: Whites: 2 per cent, Bantus: 86 per cent, Coloureds: 12 per cent, and in 1975, respectively 2 per cent, 84 per cent and 14 per cent. Although these numbers give an idea of the distribution on a national level, the important population of Coloureds in the Western Cape implies that such numbers were slightly different from the distribution of the inmates in Pollsmoor. See RHL, S3, SA, 610.42 s.9, J.C. Steyn, Prisons Department, Report, 1966–1969 (Pretoria, 1969).

⁴⁴ RHL, NS13, SA, 610.5 s.3/1976 (3), G. Viljoen, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Penal System of the Republic of South Africa (Pretoria, 1976).

⁴⁵ Lambley, The Psychology of Apartheid.

⁵⁰ Interview with Mr Stevens.

⁴⁶ Steinberg, The Number.

⁴⁷ Interview with Mr Goedhals, warder and coordinator for HIV and TB at Pollmoor, 27/02/2008.

⁴⁸ Interview with Mr Stevens.

⁴⁹ C. Van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse: the Life of ‘Nongoloza’ Mathebula, 1867–1948 (Johannesburg, Ravan Press, 1984).

⁵¹ Interview with Mr Urbosch, prisoner at Pollsmoor, 28 February 2008.

⁵⁴ Interview with Mr Hendricks, prisoner at Pollsmoor, 28 February 2008.

⁵² RHL, S13, 610.5 s.8, Statistics of Offences and Penal Institutions, 1966–1971.

⁵³ G. Kynoch, ‘From the Ninevites to the Hard Livings Gang: Township Gangsters and Urban Violence in Twentieth- Century South Africa’, African Studies, 58, 1 (1999), pp. 55–85, and M. Dingake, My Fight Against Apartheid (London, Kliptown, 1987).

⁵⁵ Goffman, Asylums.

⁶⁰ Interview with Mr. Urbosch.

⁵⁶ The Section 29 of the Internal Security Act no. 74 of 1982 allowed the police to detain any person they suspected for an indeterminate period of time, with the approval of the Minister of Law and Order. MA, UCT, BC 756, Detention Resource Centre Archive.

⁵⁷ RHL, AAM, MSS AAM 1813, Pamphlet. ‘South African Political Prisoners’, 28 October 1963.

⁵⁸ Such as SATIS, Southern African – The Imprisoned Society and the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross.

⁵⁹ MA, UCT, BC 756, Detention Resource Centre Archive.

⁶¹ The shift from ‘mentally disordered’ and ‘mentally defective’ to ‘mentally ill’ was recommended by RHL, NS13, SA, 610.42 s.32/1972, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Mental Disorders Act (Pretoria, 1972).

⁶² RHL, NS13, SA, 610.42 s.32/1967(1), Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Responsibility of Mentally Deranged Persons and Related Matters (Pretoria, 1967).

⁶³ Goffman, Asylums.

⁶⁴ Chantraine, ‘Prison, désaffiliation, stigmates’.

⁶⁵ H. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London, Routledge, 1994).

⁶⁶ J. Roux, ‘Mettre son corps en cause: la grève de la faim est une forme d'engagement public’, in J. Ion and M. Peroni, Engagement public et exposition de la personne (La Tour d'Aigues, Edition de l'Aube, 1997), pp. 111–34.

⁶⁷ P. Lane, ‘“Heroes as Ordinary People”: A Social and Cultural History of Political Imprisonment in South Africa, 1960–1992’ (Ph.D. Thesis, University of Essex, 2009), p. 184.

⁶⁸ HP, AG3199, Legal Resources Centre, 4.8.3. Lucky Galela.

⁶⁹ Lane, ‘Heroes as Ordinary People’, p. 175.

⁷⁰ F.L. Buntman, Robben Island and Prisoner Resistance to Apartheid (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 126

⁷¹ ‘In colonial Africa, “objectification” occupied much more ground than “subjectification” […] The power of colonial medicine lay not so much in its direct effect on the bodies of its subjects […] but in its ability to provide a “naturalised” and pathologised account of those subjects’, in M. Vaughan, Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness (Oxford, Polity Press, 1991), p. 25.

⁷² The gangs of the Number emerged from the original Ninevites, created by Jan Note at the end of the nineteenth century, according to the model of the Boer army. See Van Onselen, The Small Matter of a Horse.

⁷³ Steinberg, The Number.

⁷⁴ Marc Epprecht raises a similar issue when he studies the dynamics of sexuality among outlaws in Southern Africa. See M. Epprecht, Hungochani. The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (Quebec, McGill-Queen's University, 2004).

⁷⁵ M. Vaughan, ‘Reported Speech and Other Kinds of Testimony’, in D.W. Cohen, S.F. Miescher, and L. White, African Words, African Voices, Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2001), pp. 53–77.

⁷⁶ M. Dlamini, Hell Hole, Robben Island (Nottingham, Spokesman, 1984).

⁷⁷ Epprecht, Hungochani and Dlamini, Hell Hole.

⁷⁸ Interview with Mr Stanford, former political prisoner held at Pollsmoor, 24 March 2011.

⁷⁹ Interview with Mr Mhaule, former PAC prisoner held at Pollsmoor, 5 April 2011.

⁸⁰ RHL, AAM, MSS AAM 1813, Report from Prison, AAM, Issued by the World Campaign for the Release of South African Political Prisoners, 9 December 1963.

⁸¹ Chantraine, ‘Prison, désaffiliation, stigmates’.

⁸² PA, 1/4/2/10/1, Medical Certificate from Valkenberg to Pollsmoor, 12 June 1992.

⁸³ PA, 1/4/2/9, Testimony of a prisoner on the reasons of an arson, 08 November 1994.

⁸⁴ Interview with Mr Mhaule, and The Citizen, 10 November 1990, ‘PAC: Prisoners’ Release Justify Talk Policy'.

⁸⁵ PA, 1/4/2/9, Letter from a PAC prisoner to Pollsmoor administration, 9 September 1994.

⁸⁶ B. Breytenbach, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (London, Faber and Faber, 1984).

⁸⁷ Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom.

⁸⁸ I. Naidoo, Dans les bagnes de l'apartheid (Paris, Messidor, 1986).

⁸⁹ Interviews with Mr Coyne and Mr Rogers, lawyers involved in political trials during the 1980s, 23 March 2011 and 24 April 2011.

⁹⁰ Buntman expresses in great detail the different perspectives held by political prisoners on gang violence in prison. See Buntman, Robben Island, p. 142–5.

⁹¹ Epprecht, Hungochani. Buntman also explores the different cultural, political and personal reasons for the fierce opposition of political prisoners to homosexuality on Robben Island in Robben Island, pp. 241–6.

⁹² Michael Donen's Papers, Records of the Yengeni Trial, 1989.

⁹³ UCT, African Studies, J. Kriegler, J. Langa, Adv. Pillay and M.G. van Zyl, Unrest in Prisons: Final Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Unrest in Prisons (Pretoria, Government Publications, 1995).

⁹⁴ M.-R. Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History (Boston, Beacon Press, 1995).

⁹⁵ PA, 1/4/2/9, Hunger strikes and forced feeding and 1/4/2/13 P9-2, Injuries.

⁹⁶ PA, 1/2/2/1, 1/4/2/9, 1/8/11, letters sent by prisoners to Pollsmoor head office during the 1990s.

⁹⁷ PA, 1/8/11, Amnesties and Remittance. This letter was initially written in Afrikaans, and was translated into English for the purpose of this article.

⁹⁸ K. Gillespie, ‘A Brief History of South Africa's Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union’, Global Security and Cooperation, 10 (Fall 2003).

⁹⁹ PA, 1/4/2/9, Hunger strikes and forced feeding and an analysis of the Cape Times from 1991 to 1994.

¹⁰⁰ Kriegler, Unrest in Prison, p. 26.

¹⁰¹ Cape Times, 13 April 1994.

¹⁰² PA, 1/4/2/9, Collective Letter from 16 prisoners to the Head of Prison, 10 June 1994.

¹⁰³ R. Keightley, ‘Political Offences and Indemnity in South Africa’, African Journal of Human Rights, 9, 3 (1993), pp. 334–57.

¹⁰⁶ Interview with Mr Urbosch.

¹⁰⁴ J. Rancière, La mésentente. Politique et philosophie (Paris, Galilée, 1995).

¹⁰⁵ HP, A2084, Helen Suzman's papers, Ae, Justice and the South African legal system.

¹⁰⁷ J. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York, Routledge, 1990).

¹⁰⁸ H. Vally, ‘La Paix avec la Justice: l'amnistie en Afrique du Sud’, Mouvements, 53 (March–May 2008), pp. 102–9.

¹⁰⁹ D. Foster, P. Haupt and M. De Beer, The Theatre of Violence: Narratives of Protagonists in the South African Conflict (Cape Town, Institute for Justice and Reconciliation, 2005), p. 13.

¹¹⁰ For a more comprehensive view of the debate surrounding the implementation of a new legal system in post-apartheid South Africa, one can refer to: Foster, Haupt and De Beer, The Theatre of Violence; D. Posel and G. Simpson (eds), Commissioning the Past (Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press, 2003); R. Keightley, ‘Political Offences and Indemnity in South Africa’, African Journal of Human Rights, 9, 3 (1993), pp. 334–57; J. Burchell and A. Erasmus, Criminal Justice in a New Society: Essays in honour of Solly Leeman (Lansdowne, Juta, 2003); J. Comaroff and J. Comaroff, Law and Disorder in the Postcolony (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2006).

¹¹¹ The scope of this article did not allow for a more extensive development of this historical relationship. The reader can however refer to the following texts dealing with the issue: E. Hopkins, ‘The Politics of Crime: Aggression and Control in a Colonial Context’, American Anthropologist, 75 (1973), pp. 731–42; Chanock, South African Legal Culture and P. Rich, ‘Race, Science, and the Legitimization of White Supremacy in South Africa, 1902–1940, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 23, 4 (1990), pp. 665–86.