It’s a cellphone, Not a cell phone: Authorities do have the means to block signal in our lawless prisons
My bors is warm gemaak. And it’s all the fault of that bragging prisoner who went on TikTok last week, laughing about how lekka his life behind bars is.
His name is Bornface Banks and he was being held at Goodwood Prison, while facing kidnapping charges.
It’s from inside there that he laughed in our faces, reminding us that he doesn’t have to pay for anything.
“This morning, we had breakfast, in the afternoon we had lunch, and we are about to have dinner. We are happy, and we are not even paying rent, we are not buying electricity, we don't even cook, they give us food for free. They give us toiletries for free, and the education is free. You think we are suffering, we are not suffering,” cackled the Zimbabwean-born prisoner, surrounded by agreeing nods and smiles.
But that viral video of his brought lots of heat to him and his fellow inmates, whose cells were subsequently raided by authorities and contraband confiscated.
Plus, he is now in maximum security with few privileges, if any. But of course what little he does have, is still funded by us taxpayers.
Just recently, I wrote about our new Minister of Correctional Services Pieter Groenewald, who wants prisoners to live a little less comfortably.
He suggested that they work for at least some of their own upkeep, by farming their own food.
Surely prisoner Banks’ audacious video strengthened Groenewald’s argument, even with his critics.
Banks definitely didn’t endear himself to hard-working South Africans for whom the very thought that we fund the lazy imprisoned lives of criminals who terrorise us on the outside, is anathema.
But there is another, less obvious problem that I want to take issue with.
And that is the fact that this man, who faces numerous charges and is reportedly in-and-out of prison, has posted more than 50 videos to his 14 000 TikTok followers.
The one video in question was viewed more than 1.5 million times.
The implication is that he is being idolised online.
And as we have witnessed in other cases, this kind of support is addictive and encourages people to continue doing what they are doing.
It isn’t simply a matter of his supporters living vicariously through him, but rather a terrible indictment on our society.
By liking and sharing his videos and exploits, we are cheerleading his violent behaviour, and then complaining that crime is holding us hostage in our homes.
The best thing we can do for Bornface Banks and ourselves, is to ignore him completely.
Because not getting any attention is torture to people who crave it.
I also need to remind Minister Groenewald of something I wrote five years ago, just in case he missed it.
At the time, the city and the province’s security bosses were considering blocking cell phone reception in prisons.
It was in response to prisoners continuing to run their illegal activities from the inside, using smuggled cell phones.
We also had a demonstration of how possible something like this is, as it had already been successfully tested in Parliament, when journalists realised that cell phone reception had been cut.
We now know that government has the capability to shut a building down digitally, so why not do it at prisons?
The problem of inmates getting hold of cell phones is a recurring one, and this would be the most effective way to address the issue.
Now I hear you say that prisoners will simply find other ways to communicate with the outside world.
And yes of course they will; after all, Bornface made it clear that they have all the time in the world to laze around and come up with crafty ways to crook the system.
But without cell phone coverage, it would make planning and executing crimes a lot harder for them.
And if they are also being kept busy with planting and harvesting jailhouse vegetables, we could reduce the temptations.
They say idle hands are the devil’s playground, right.
Alternatively, get our spies to scan all outgoing cell phone calls, to learn about crimes being planned.
Maybe then, we would all be a little more tolerant of special privileges for violent inmates.
dailyvoice@inl.co.za