African Prison Hell

A shocking documentary shown on South Africa's state broadcaster last night showed the wretched conditions inside Zimbabwe's prisons, in which dozens of prisoners die each day from hunger and lack of medical care, The Times of London reports. The 55 prisons, meant to contain 17,000, house 35,000 in reality. Starvation is a problem not only for the prisoners, but also for the staff. The horrors don't stop there. In the film, Hell Hole, prisoners describe the dead rotting on the ground, and cells that became makeshift "hospital wards" where the sick and health slept side by side, packed like sardines, among those who died during the night.