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Mashudu Netsianda, Senior Reporter

VISITING Commissioner of the Botswana Prison Service (BPS) Dinah Marathe was yesterday highly impressed by the several income generating projects being undertaken at the country’s correctional and rehabilitation facilities and vowed that they replicate them back home.

She was speaking soon after touring Khami Prisons in Bulawayo and Anju Prison Farm in Umguza District, Matabeleland North together with her Zimbabwean counterpart, Commissioner-General Moses Chihobvu.

Anju Prison Farm is core to the Zimbabwe Prisons and Correctional Service (ZPCS) drive to empower inmates with life skills which they can use upon release from prison.

The farm is one of the 23 ZPCS farms producing food for inmates at the different prisons across the country.

The 203-hectare farm with an arable land of 130 hectares, is being utilised for the production of a wide range of horticultural produce, cereals and edible oil seeds.

Produce from the farm is used for feeding inmates at prisons in Matabeleland region while the surplus is sold to generate income to fund some of the day-to-day operations of the prisons.

Khami Prison, has adopted an enviable integrated farming model which is providing supplementary feeding for about 4 000 inmates in Bulawayo Metropolitan Province’s five prisons.

The 2 577-hectare farm has an arable land of 61 hectares, which is being utilised for the production of a wide range of horticultural produce, cotton and winter wheat under the Command Agriculture Scheme.

A total of 2 102 hectares has been set aside for livestock production which include piggery, rabbitry, dairy and cattle ranching.
Comm Marathe, together with her seven-member delegation, is on an exercise to take notes from the ZPCS as they seek to implement best practices from the country’s correctional and rehabilitation facilities.

They have so far visited various prisons in the country and will today tour a juvenile correctional facility at Whawha Prison in the Midlands.

In an interview, Comm Marathe commended ZPCS for coming up income generating projects that assist in terms of rehabilitating inmates.

“For us, these visits to prisons in Zimbabwe are part of our benchmarking exercise and I must say that we are really impressed the projects being undertaken at prisons farms in Zimbabwe.

When we visited Khami Prisons and Anju Farm, we were taken through mixed farming projects, which include dairy farming, piggery and goat rearing and these are projects that we are mostly interested in as Botswana,” she said.

“In Botswana, we are also in the process of establishing a dairy project in our prisons and we already have cattle, piggery and goats.

We have set aside enough land to establish the dairy project and we will therefore be looking at our counterparts in Zimbabwe to assist is in that regard because they already have one that they are successfully running at Khami Prisons.”

Comm Marathe said as BPS, they are focusing on projects related to the rehabilitation of prisoners.

“We believe that holistically looking at their (ZPCS) projects, they actually relate to our mandate of the rehabilitation of prisoners.

In fact, these are the projects that when inmates complete their sentences, they would be able to sustain themselves and their families,” she said.

“Through these projects, they are also imparting skills and knowledge to inmates for their future lives outside prison.

This is one aspect we are looking at and we are also appreciating the magnitude of the projects and their impact is felt across the organisation such that the Commissioner-General is not dependent on the fiscus for the daily running of the organisation.”

Comm Marathe said basing on the open prison concept in Zimbabwe, Botswana would soon be introducing such facilities.

“The open prison concept is something that we will also be piloting in Botswana as it connects the inmates to the people such that by the time they complete their sentences, the relationship between the prisoners and the community would have already been built,” she said.

Comm Marathe said Zimbabwe and Botswana are set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding that will see prisoner exchange where a national serving in another country will complete part of the sentence in his or her country.

The agreement, if implemented will see more than 400 Zimbabweans who are serving in different jails in Botswana completing their sentences in Zimbabwe while about 10 Botswana nationals serving in Zimbabwe also finish their terms in Botswana.

Comm-Gen Chihobvu said talks were underway to have the prisoners from either country going to complete their sentences in their home countries, if they so wish.

“The MoU includes the transfer of inmates from either country, we are looking at our inmates who are Zimbabweans, if they want to finish their sentence here in Zimbabwe, they can be transferred if so wishing.

However, if they do not want to, they will serve in Botswana,” he said.

The two countries enjoy a good mutual relationship and in February they signed five additional MoUs as they cemented fraternal relations on a wide-range of socio-economic issues during the third session of the Zimbabwe-Botswana Bi-National Commission (BNC) in Victoria Falls.

President Mnangagwa and his Botswana counterpart, Mokgweetsi Masisi, witnessed the signing of agreements on child protection, cooperation in the field of tourism, cooperation in the field of agriculture and food security, water and cooperation on youth development.

— @mashnets
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