A prisoner serving a life sentence for murder wants permission to use a laptop and access to the internet for his studies.
|||Durban - A Westville prisoner serving a life sentence for murder is using convicted drug dealer Frank Nabolisa’s case against the Department of Correctional Services in a bid to get permission to use a laptop and printer, as well as access to the internet for his legal studies.
Medium B prisoner and Unisa fourth-year law student Xolani Dlamini made an urgent application in the Durban High Court on Friday against the Minister and National Commissioner of Correctional Services.
He had initially filed the handwritten application on his own, but on Friday, when the matter was heard before Judge Nompumelelo Radebe, he had legal representation.
The judge indicated Dlamini’s application needed correction and granted an order for him to file amending papers.
The Department of Correctional Services would be opposing Dlamini’s application.
In his handwritten affidavit, Dlamini said in March he applied to the department to be allowed to bring his laptop and a printer into the prison and also asked to be allowed access to the internet for study purposes.
He said his application had been recommended by the head of education at Medium B, but said it had still not been approved or attended to. “I have been told it is not approved because there is no head of the centre in Medium B,” he said.
Dlamini, who had been sentenced to life for murder in 2001, said the matter should be treated as urgent because he has already received his study material, but cannot study as he does not have the “required study essentials”.
“I am falling behind in my studies every day that passes with me not having these study essentials. The respondents are violating my right to education as I can’t study without the study essentials they are refusing me. The court should intervene on my behalf immediately to halt the violation which interferes with my rehabilitation,” he said.
Dlamini said if the court did not treat the matter as urgent, he would not be able to study and meet deadlines and therefore would not finish his LLB degree.
He said his case had been based on similar facts as those in the Nabolisa application against the Minister of Correctional Services.
Nabolisa is serving 12 years at Westville Prison. Nabolisa and Sheryl Cwele, the former director of health at the Hibiscus Coast Municipality and the ex-wife of State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele, were convicted of dealing in cocaine by Pietermaritzburg High Court Judge Piet Koen in May 2011.
The pair recruited two women and offered them work overseas.
One woman was arrested in Brazil in 2008 after 10kg of cocaine was found in her luggage at the Sao Paulo airport, and is serving an eight-year jail term.
Nabolisa made an application in the Johannesburg High Court, in May, for certain prisoner privileges. He wanted his right to education and to be classified as a Group A prisoner with better privileges, which meant he could get his own computer to study further.
Judge Kathy Satchwell ruled that Nabolisa should be given “reasonable time to study or to use the computer”.
Dlamini has requested the name of a Medium B official who would be responsible for assisting Unisa students, or alternatively, for one to be appointed.
Further, Dlamini wanted set opening and closing times for the prison library and for it to be open at weekends for him and other Medium B prisoners.
Judge Radebe granted an order for Dlamini to file amending papers later this month and for the department to file responding papers by next month.
Dlamini was also ordered to pay the wasted costs of Friday’s application.
noelene.barbeau@inl.co.za
Daily News