Life: Correction: prison life can be human

Murder, gangsterism and rioting are rife in South Africa's jails. But one charismatic prisoner and two bold officials have shown what can be done with a boxing ring, a football pitch and a bit of chutzpah. John Perlman on a punch in the eye for the cynics

This is, quite literally, a captive audience. But even that doesn't explain why the faces are pressing so hard against the bars, straining for a better view of the boxing ring below.

Never mind that one fighter is wearing blue jeans and the other, kitted out in a silver-grey designer sweatsuit, has forgotten to unclip his radio pager from his waistband. What matters is that they are here, sparring away in the courtyard of Krugersdorp prison - Baby Jake Matlala, former world flyweight champ, is trading leather with Dingaan Thobela, "The Rose of Soweto", one-time junior lightweight champion of the world.

As these two heroes of the South African townships bob and weave, senior prison officers stand and chat with inmates - armed robbers, guys doing time for fraud, murderers and rapists. It's an extraordinary scene. And the reason why it is happening in a prison system as notoriously harsh as South Africa's is thanks, in large part, to one of the inmates.

He is a slender, bespectacled young man, mid-thirties, whose stylish cardigan looks odd against the shapeless olive green of his standard-issue prison trousers. He has been working the crowd constantly, making sure that everyone is doing OK.

In October 1992, Greg Blank, a high-flying stockbroker, stood before Mr Justice TD Cloete in the Johannesburg Supreme Court and heard that he had been sentenced to eight years' imprisonment for fraud. No, there would be no leave to appeal, said the judge, who also rejected defence counsel's suggestion that society would be better served if Blank - who had pleaded guilty - was required to perform community service instead of doing time.

South Africa then, as now, was riddled with white-collar crime, in government and in business, and the judge spoke for many when he said: "The accused deserves to go to prison. The requirements of society demand it."

By the time he was 28, Blank was a director of a major broking firm, earning more than a million rand, about pounds 170,000, a year. He was one of a six-man syndicate that owned 60 racehorses; his garage, which once housed a small blue Mini, was home to a Ferrari, a BMW and a Harley Davidson. Blank had known hard times: his father's business had been ruined when a partner embezzled the money, leaving the family with "nothing overnight", as he recalls it. Nevertheless, Krugersdorp prison, half an hour's drive from Johannesburg, was like another country.

Before entering jail, Blank said that he would handle it the way he handled his compulsory military service. "I'll practise indifference," he said. But attempted indifference was swiftly shattered by the realities of prison life. "I saw two people stabbed in my first week," he says.

On the stock exchange, Blank's charm had been well known. "He could talk to anyone from a shoe-shine boy to a CEO, from an 18-year-old girl to a 65-year-old secretary," says one colleague. "He made them all feel special."

In prison, Blank started to respond in the way he understood best. He began giving new meaning to the words "insider trading".

At Krugersdorp, the men he had to win over were two career correctional services officers: Colonel Nollies Nolte, the head of the prison, and the man above him, the prison commander Nico Lotter. Nolte and Lotter, who came to Krugersdorp at the beginning of this year, had some fresh ideas of their own.

Nolte is a warm, cheery man who knows that Krugersdorp is not strictly following the correctional services textbook. "We're trying to show that even in prison we can live as human beings," he says. "All over, prisoners and warders don't work together - but here we do."

One of the first ventures was to turn a piece of waste ground on the east side of the prison into a soccer field. Most of the 2,500 inmates are black and soccer is their first love. Before long, the Krugersdorp Inmates Football Association (Kifa) was running an eight-team league, each with reserve sides.

Some of the prisoners have taken refereeing courses, but inmates have not lost the soccer fans' ingrained suspicion of the men in black. "If it's a very tough match, we ask a warder to referee," says Steve Hobo, who is serving a sentence for fraud and is a key man in the Kifa administration.

On the same day that Matlala and Thobela came to Krugersdorp, a Kifa eleven took on the first-division club Jomo Cosmos and played well before losing 2-0. Challenges have been issued to other professional clubs, and a number of top coaches have come to help out, including the former Arsenal winger Alex Forbes, who once coached the top Soweto club Orlando Pirates.

None of this has cost the prison authorities much. Using connections in the outside world, Blank and others have got businessmen and friends to make donations, in money or in kind. The prison now has a modern, well-equipped gym - and Blank got away with calling it the Krugersdorp Health and Racquet club (the Health and Racquet club is South Africa's smartest chain of gyms).

Inside the recreation room, which has pool tables and video games, there is a car radio and tape system mounted on the wall, evidence of the prison's cheekiest appeal for help. Underneath the system is an advert for the manufacturer's radio and car protection systems. "We said, give us the stuff and when people see your brand, they won't steal them any more," Blank explains.

Nobody at Krugersdorp is under any illusions about where the inmates come from. "Don't forget, half the guys are in here for armed robbery," Blank says. "None of them are in for picking roses." But everyone agrees that the football, the boxing, the sense that life can be made bearable, have transformed the atmosphere.

Hobo, who has served six years and has one year left, remembers earlier days: "There was nothing here for us. There was fighting every day. There was blood every day." Lotter says: "We have no abuse taking place here any more. The most important thing about the sport is that it is an outlet."

Perhaps the most eloquent testimony to the change at Krugersdorp is the fact that two former warders - one of them sentenced for assisting with an escape attempt - are serving their time there, sharing cells with the prisoners they used to guard.

Baby Jake Matlala is quite clear about why he visited Krugersdorp. "These men must be encouraged that they are well accepted in the community," he says. His views are echoed by one of the Cosmos players, Sputla Biyela, who ran into three guys from his home neighbourhood after the game. "We wanted to make those people happy, because they are part of us," he says.

Making prisoners happy - that won't exactly go down a treat with South Africa's crime-weary public. In 1994, 18,000 South Africans were murdered. There were 67,000 armed robberies, 150,000 serious assaults, 31,000 reported rapes. The World Health Organisation rates the country as the most murderous in the world. Violence in South African prisons - many of them dominated by viciously competing gangs - claimed 44 lives last year, and rioting left many cell blocks charred and ruined. It is estimated that some prisons are as much as 50 per cent over capacity, but if a suggested 4 per cent cut in the Correctional Services budget is implemented, the state will be forced to put as many as 30,000 prisoners on the street.

After visiting Cape Town's Pollsmoor prison last month, the jail's most celebrated former inmate, Nelson Mandela (held there from 1982 to 1988), said the overcrowding in the place was "beyond words". "The dire need is to have more prisons," he said. "We should be thinking in terms of building more schools, places of entertainment and more medical institutions, but we have to do something about the overcrowding."

The advocates of change at Krugersdorp argue that until this happens, the route they have taken is worth following. Apart from curbing violence, Blank, Lotter and others believe that they can actually help to tackle the cash crisis. Plans are afoot to start hydroponic gardening. "We hope to make the prison self-sufficient and teach the guys to farm at the same time."

The Krugersdorp experiment is being watched by Pretoria with some interest and a lot of scepticism. In the long term, though, prison reform can only achieve so much. "Recidivism is around 80 per cent," says Blank. "The real solution is for companies outside to commit themselves to employing a certain percentage of ex-prisoners."