Two years spent stark naked with no blankets, never seeing the sky - this was part of political prisoner Kevin Woods's life of hell in Robert Mugabe's prisons. He was released last weekend.

Woods is a quietly-spoken, balding and bearded man who has just spent 19 of his 53-and-a-half years in Zimbabwe's Chikurubi and Harare Central prisons.

He spent five of those years in solitary confinement on Chikurubi's death row, during which time he never saw the sky. And for two of the years on death row he was forced to go naked - those were the rules - and without blankets. He spent most of the remaining 14 years in a 7m by 4m communal cell, with about 35-40 other prisoners.

"I don't know how I kept sane - maybe I'm not sane. I may look okay sitting here, but I'm strung out inside. All I can say is that there's that old adage about taking things one day at a time, and that's what I did. You have to programme your head never to think beyond the day that you're living in. Even thinking about the next month was too much for me.

"I was also blessed - yes, blessed - that there was no family member in Zimbabwe to visit me after my death sentence was commuted," Woods said. "Because I think that, if I had had to see loved ones, I could not have coped."

Woods, Michael Smith and Philip Conjwayo - known by some as the Harare Three - were sentenced to death in 1988 for the murder of Obed Mwanza, a Zimbabwean driver, whom they hired to drive a car to a house occupied by ANC officials in Bulawayo. Mwanza did not know the car was carrying a bomb which the three men detonated, killing him and injuring three ANC officials. Their death sentences were commuted to life in 1994 by the Zimbabwe Supreme Court.

Woods said that he had been working at the time for South Africa's National Intelligence Service, the successor to Boss, the Bureau for State Security. "But, when I was caught, I was dropped like a dead rat by them. I have not been paid, nor is anyone going to pay me. I have nothing."

Last Friday, Woods, Smith and Conjwayo, were summoned to the office of the commander of Harare Central.

"I was expecting bad news because when you get called to the commander's office, it's inevitably bad news," said Woods yesterday.

"Besides, I've had nothing but bad news for 19 years. The commander waffled for a while - then he told us that President Robert Mugabe had given us clemency and that Smith and I were going to be deported. I didn't believe it was happening till I stepped over the border at Beit Bridge."

Woods, an ex-Rhodesian policeman, said he did not know why Mugabe - who previously had refused requests from former president Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and Njongonkulu Ndungane, the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, that the three men be released - changed his mind last week.

"I believe it was all due to Father Fidelis Mukonori," Woods said. "He's an elderly, gracious and kind Catholic priest who started visiting us about two years ago. He's also, I believe, Mugabe's confessor and a personal friend of the president. He's one of those people: when he starts talking, you listen.

"I'm so glad to be out of there, I even feel grateful to Mugabe. The only thing I feel bitter about is that it's taken so long. I mean, my war was with the ANC and it ended in 1994. And the ANC forgave us - look what Mandela tried to do for us. But it took until now."

Woods's worst days were on death row because once prisoners heard that they had lost their appeals against the deathsentence, he said, "nothing would happen, nothing would be said, until the officials would just show up at 4am, without warning, usually the first Friday of the month, and take you to the gallows. Often the families of the hanged men would not even be told until they came to visit."

"Once you lost your appeal, it was cheers. There's one man who's been on death row in Chikurubi for 17 years. He's completely mad now. And of course we had to go around naked. But the worst was that, on death row, you never breathe fresh air or see the sky. Never."

Yesterday morning at Johannesburg International Airport, in the company of Storm, his daughter, Wood saw Jane, his ex-wife for the first time in 14 years. She was out of the country until yesterday.

"I hugged Jane just now," he said. "It was the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me. Look at my eyes - you can see how red they are. It was even better than my first chicken burger when I got back to South Africa a week ago - because, believe you me, there were no chicken burgers on the menu at prison."

Woods said that breakfast (mieliepap) was given to prisoners at 8.30am, lunch (pap and boiled cabbage) at 10.30am, and then supper (more pap) at 1.30pm.

"So in effect we went without food for about 19 hours. Some lucky prisoners - like me, because I have a coronary problem - got bread and tea in the evening. But most did not."

After breakfast, said Woods, the prisoners in the communal cell took what few possessions they owned outside in a plastic bag and then sat in a large concrete exercise area until they were locked up again at about 3pm.

"What did we do all those hours in the cell? Nothing - what could we do? People talked to one another. I had a radio."

Woods said he never had any troubles with any of his fellow prisoners, that in fact he often intervened on other prisoners' behalf.

"We were considered political prisoners and we were never touched. But other prisoners who did not squat fast enough - you have to squat when you see an officer in Chikurubi - were often beaten mercilessly. I often tried to stop that."

He said the worst problem faced by the prisoners was during the past 10 years or so when the Zimbabwean economy took a dive. "No hot water, often no water at all, no soap, none of that stuff - and the worst was that medical attention deteriorated," Woods said.

Source: https://iol.co.za/news/politics/2006-07-09-my-naked-hell-in-zim-jail/?utm_source=chatgpt.com