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Mandela: 'Honor those who suffered for justice'

By Alphonso Van Marsh
CNN

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JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- His eyes are sensitive to light, he wears a hearing aid and often walks with a cane, but former South African President Nelson Mandela is in excellent health for an 88-year-old man, his personal assistant and spokeswoman, Zelda La Grange, said. She sees to it that Mandela has access to the best medical care in the country.

But the man who spent more than 27 years in prison as part of South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle said many former political prisoners like him aren't so lucky. Thousands of apartheid-era activists are in dire medical and financial need, and Mandela said businesses thriving under South Africa's new democracy need to open their checkbooks to help them out.

"A preamble to our Constitution reminds us to honor those who suffered for justice and freedom in our country," Mandela said. "Former political prisoners who sacrificed dearly come here to appeal for assistance to provide some comfort as they grow older."

Some 3,000 ex-political prisoners are getting older, suffering from mental health problems or HIV/AIDS, according South Africa's Ex-Political Prisoners Committee, a loose union of formerly jailed activists. Committee co-chairman and former political prisoner David Moisi said many have no health insurance, no job, no savings and no place to call home.

"I personally feel ashamed to meet a comrade I shared a cell with scavenging for food on the beach," Moisi said. While some political prisoners argue the democracy they fought for has let them down, Moisi is careful not to directly criticize the country's African National Congress-dominated government for their woes.

"Ironically we had hoped that once things became better, then our quality of life would become better. But we are returning to the same squalor that we had left behind," Moisi said.

Moisi, who spent two of his eight apartheid-era prison years on death row, recently launched a fundraising campaign called the Ex-Political Prisoner's Trust. He said the aim is to provide former prisoners with cash, medical care, legal and financial advice before it is too late. "In some instances, failure to get assistance leads to people committing suicide," Moisi said.

'Sleepless nights' and poverty to the grave

Mandela lent his support to the campaign, hosting a press conference with Mosiuoa Lakota, another former prisoner now serving as South Africa's Defense Minister.

Lakota said he's heard too many stories about former political prisoners whose poverty in life extended to the grave. "It gives us sleepless nights," Lakota said of families of dead former political prisoners who can't afford a coffin for burial. "Those who have served our country selflessly at least deserve a decent send off."

The trust is already assisting former political prisoners, like David Jwara. During South Africa's apartheid era, Jwara fought for the ANC's Umkhonto we Sizwe, or military wing, before apartheid authorities caught and jailed him.

Jwara spent three years of his six-year prison sentence in isolation. After apartheid, he joined South Africašs police force, but lost his job after being diagnosed a manic depressive with post-traumatic stress disorder. He later learned he had contracted HIV, his wife left him, and then poverty drove him from his middle-class home back to the poor township neighborhood where he grew up.

"I couldn't cope," Jwara said.

Jwara's prison connection led him to the Ex-Political Prisoner's Trust, which pays his insurance premiums. And that means access to life extending anti-retroviral drugs and psychological treatment at one of the better clinics in Johannesburg, South Africa. He said he knows he's in the minority.

"Most South Africans and the international community do not know what we are going through. They think we have been integrated into society. They don't know that we are suffering," Jwara said from his hospital bed.

A perception that all former political prisoners have moved on to political and business success, like Mandela and Lakota, hurts fundraising efforts, Moisi said. "Not everybody had the opportunity to get those senior government or private sector positions," he said.

Moisi said the trust has yet to receive significant donations from South African business. But he said he's hopeful a sense of moral obligation kicks in soon, so that his trust can help former political prisoners live -- and die -- with dignity.

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