An award-winning initiative involving inmates in a radio station and plans for a world-first prison TV channel lie in tatters.
|||Cape Town - An award-winning initiative involving inmates in a prison radio station and plans for a world-first prison television channel lie in tatters after the project, which had been running for 14 years at Pollsmoor prison in Cape Town, was shut down by the area commissioner.
After more than a year of official promises that have never materialised, and the loss of all his sponsors, the founder of the Prison Broadcasting Network (PBN) has all but given up.
The project grew from a music collection of 20 CDs and a CD walkman broadcasting over the PA system into a fully fledged radio station with sound and television studios, training inmates in radio, music and TV production. But the Pollsmoor area commissioner, Mandla Mkhabela, terminated the programme in January last year, saying the facility had changed and now housed mostly awaiting-trial prisoners, who were not involved in rehabilitation programmes.
Marius Boaden, the founder of the network, says this is nonsense, since other rehab programmes continue at Pollsmoor, and many of his students are still there.
News of the move caused such an outcry last year that the Correctional Services Department told SABC following a Special Assignment programme on the subject that not only would the project be reinstated, it would be rolled out to all prisons. It had also mandated the national commissioner, Tom Moyane, to partner PBN in launching a world-first national prison TV channel. The spokesman for then Correctional Services Minister Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula wrote to Boaden in February of that year confirming the proposal and told him to liaise with Moyane’s office.
Then, everything went quiet.
Boaden said on Thursday he had called and e-mailed Moyane’s personal assistant numerous times with no response. Following the cabinet reshuffle that resulted in S’bu Ndebele replacing Mapisa-Nqakula as Correctional Services minister, Boaden met Ndebele’s spokesman, Logan Maistry, in August last year, with no result. He wrote to President Jacob Zuma, and received a letter in April saying the matter was receiving attention, but has heard nothing further.
Maistry said on Thursday it was an operational matter and the ministry did not involve itself in these, referring the Cape Argus to Western Cape regional commissioner Delekile Klaas.
Klaas said he had asked for a report on the relationship with PBN. But
Boaden said he had not been contacted for any report.
Chairman of Parliament’s correctional services oversight committee Vincent Smith (ANC) said if PBN was being shut down the committee would want to get a deeper understanding of the reasons behind this.
craig.dodds@inl.co.za
Political Bureau