Until prison do us part

15 Jan, 2017 - 00:01 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

Wendy Nyakurerwa
Her Point of View

There is a thin line between the aggrieved and the wrongdoer, Desmond Chideme and his wife Olinda Chapel recently schooled us on that. Apparently, it’s all about strategy.The way in which someone decides to tell their story of abuse determines which side of the fence they fall to. Chapel, having alternated between screaming her lungs out and weeping in those social media videos, told a story of a woman who is unhappy in a marriage; a woman who is being abused emotionally and financially, but hangs on.

There are no signs of her going anywhere.

On the other hand, the villain in this episode — Stunner — the one who cheated on his wife, maintained his cool and went on to wax lyrical about their marriage, even icing the cake by shedding a few tears and winning a few hearts along the way.

When the villain turns the victim it really sucks.

Prisoners of love

Now imagine this, one day your spouse is sent to prison for whatever reason, God forbid!

With your loved locked away, there is trauma, pain and struggle to understand how your partner is coping behind. Then is the anguish, what the hell was your loved one thinking to make them earn jail time.

You are on a roller coaster of emotions and that is not all that you have to deal with. With time, nature calls and you just have to satisfy your sexual needs, after all you have been married for quite some time.

But hold on, your better half, the one you promised for better or for worse, is in prison, remember?

Please note that conjugal visits are not permissible in Zimbabwe’s correctional facilities and so your relief is not going to be as easy as walking in and out of prison.

Maybe if you were in some parts of Australia, USA, India and Israel; where conjugal visits are permitted and designated structures have been put in place to cater for them, you would arrange to visit your partner in prison.

If you were in Canada, where they have gone a step further, your partner could be permitted a private family visit of up to 72 hours once every two months, provided that they do not have disciplinary restrictions.

That way, you would preserve your family’s bonds and increase the chances of success for your imprisoned partner’s eventual return to life after release from prison.

Not so in Zimbabwe. What do you do then?

There are two options available — either you take the seemingly easy route and well, move on with your life, such that your better half’s heart can be smashed into tiny pieces whenever they come back home from prison.

The other narrower route — you wait for your loved one to serve their decades-long sentence and then you can pick up from where you left — gara ndichauya mudiwa.

The latter option sounds really romantic.

But what if there was a third option, one that would serve as a preserve for the marriage institution without necessarily straining both parties as they go through the other depressing emotions.

What if prisoners were entitled to conjugal visits such that being behind bars wouldn’t automatically take away their right to have sex, as long as they have reached the legal age of consent?

Prisoners, like everyone else, have rights that are enshrined in the national constitution. Their sentences do not involve sexual deprivation, unless if the magistrates are deliberately mum on that, which I doubt.

Unfortunately, several key people do not seem to see any value in the conjugal visitations.

Dr Rita Nyamupinga, the director of the Female Prisoners Support Trust, is on record trashing their need.

“The prisoners need food first before sex. Our jails are overcrowded and conditions are inhumane. Instead of deliberating on such near-impossible solutions as the introduction of conjugal visits, we should be thinking of how to make sure that basic health services are accessible to prisoners,” she told The Sunday Mail in an earlier interview.

She was right that prisoners need food first before sex, she was also right about the need to provide basic health services for prisoners.

However, she missed the point when she advised that we shouldn’t bother deliberating on “near-impossible solutions as the introduction of conjugal visits”.

Where there is a will there is always a way. We will talk about not having the proper facilities that can allow conjugal visits until heaven comes if we are not willing to even think about investing in them.

ZPCS acting public relations officer Superintendent Priscilla Mthembo says conjugal visits do not feature in our plans. As she rightly notes, visitations require special accommodation structures, which we do not have. We also do not have legislation that allows conjugal visits in place.

The country is in this situation because it chooses to, I believe. The structures can be built, it’s not a ‘near-impossibility’. The lawmakers can get down to business and craft the requisite legislation.

If not for the inmates and their partners at home then maybe we need to act so as to curb the HIV prevalence in prisons. According to the ZPCS, HIV prevalence among prisoners stands at 28 percent. According to UNAIDS estimates, the country’s prevalence rate stands at 14,7 percent.

What could be causing this disparity?

We have imprisoned grown-up men and women cut off from their spouses. The HIV prevalence rate amongst them doubles that of the country, that’s food for thought.

We might be making headways in fighting the virus outside of the cells but if keep allowing the rates to increase amongst inmates, who by the way will rejoin society sooner rather than later, then we are taking two steps backwards every time we step forward once.

 

Feedback: [email protected]. Twitter: @wnyakurerwa

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