From prisoner to prisoner guardian

funds in Murehwa.

Nights in particular are horrible and dangerously cold. Each night that passed, was definitely a reminder that he was really in incarceration and therefore, had forfeited all his rights, including the right warmth.

One cold night, he pulled his small blanket tighter around his body and slowly stirred into deep slumber. In the stealth of the night, he had a voice, a shriek of a voice, calling him and when he woke up he did not forget the words. Neither did he sleep again until day break.

“I was in my prison cell serving 15 years for misusing school funds. One night, as I slept, a shriek but sharp voice said to me “I brought you hear so that you can see how my people are suffering. You will be out of prison but don’t forget to come back.”

“It troubled me the whole night and I did not sleep, thereafter. I had abused school funds and the law caught up with me. The following day, my friend, a fellow prisoner whom I had met and befriended in jail, Moffat, who was dong five years for abusing bank funds, told be while in a queue for tea, that he had a strange dream. “We exchanged our dreams in notes written on tissue paper.

We had no conventional paper and the message was the same. It was the same dream although we slept in different cells.

Moffat had been a banker at CABS. That was in 1985 when I was in jail. Then we started praying three times a day without fail and unbeknown to us a Presidential amnesty was coming because of an election and the Pop was also coming.

We were released, after I had only served three years, Moffat was released too,” says Mandianike.
A few months after starting the prayers, Manidanike and his friends received visits from theological colleges and started studies in diplomas.

“Miracles started happening. Firstly Moffat’s parents were in Darlington, Mutare and were under siege form Renamo bandits and somehow they got someone to transfer them to a safe haven in Marondera.

“My first wife, now late, was also under arrest that time for harbouring a criminal after she had tried to conceal me from the law enforcement agents when I was on the run and the miracle is that she was soon to be found not guilty. It was then followed by our releases,’’ he says.

Since his release, Madianike established the Prison Fellowship, a private voluntary organisation that has transformed the lives of both serving and former prisoners, as well as their families.

“When we came out of prison, we wanted to form this organisation but it took too long before we were allowed to register. We were convicts and no one trusted us.

We went through serious vetting but eventually we got registered because of the support we got from Chikurubi Maximum Prison officers. We eventually got registered in 1994.

“We now have opened pre-schools for children carried into prison by their jailed mothers. We are building a home for all children whose mothers are in prison so that they don’t stay in the cells with their mothers.

We find it is unfair for them to be in jail for crimes committed by their mothers. At Chikurubi we have established a day care centre for those children who were brought into jail by their mothers. This is a model day care centre that we are going to build in every prison.

“At Chikurubi again the female cells are not feminine and we are going to transform them into real female structures. There are facilities that females need, that are not needed by male prisoners but at Chikurubi, there is nothing feminine about the female cells.

“We have a skills training programmes and we have trained people who cannot write to write while in jail. Others are doing degrees with the Zimbabwe Open University. At Connemara Open Prison we built a chapel where convicts and the community congregate for the same church service.

“We have trained mechanics into Journeyman Class 1, and they are tested by CMED while in prison. We are not trying anything new; all we do is complement Zimbabwe Prison Services.

The Prison Fellowship with headquarters with in Waterfalls, Harare, now has branches at every prison in Zimbabwe where it takes care of convicts, former convicts and their families.

“We assist families of serving convicts, we follow up discharged convicts and see if they have managed to transform and avoid going back to prison.

“Every year, we hold Christmas parties at our headquarters for families of those serving jail. We hold parties for children who are in prison with their mothers and for those who have been released from jail.

“We also give gifts to those in jail,’’ say Mandianike. About his marriage life Mandianike says he had to remarry as the age of 63, after his first wife Edith died.

“Naturally, after the death of my first wife, I did not choose a convict as a wife, because I felt that a couple of convicts will not do. It certainly would not be a good home with two convicts, husband and wife.

“I remarried at 63 and I have a three year-old daughter. I had four children with my first wife. I had to go to jail to learn to be good.

I used to smoke cigarettes and mbanje, anything that came my way but prison taught me to change. I had to go there to learn about God.

“What I am doing is a mandate from God, through Jesus. We donate food and blankets to convicts and their families.

“Every one of us is a potential prisoner and so we must accept prisoners when they come back. They will have undergone correction.

Because of our economic set up 75 percent of those in prison are under the age of 40 and that is 16 000 prisoners, we are talking about.

Where will they get the jobs, if we do not train them survival skills. “If you look at it, when you apply for a job, you are asked, have you ever been convicted? If you say yes, there is no job for you.

So if they don’t get something to do, they commit crime and go back to jail again. That is very wrong and discriminatory. Even these NGOs, they are busy funding politics and not correctional services,’’ says Mandianike.