There has been a patient in Sandes Medical Male ward since I started working at Victoria Hospital. He was a caricature of a staving man, wasted, profoundly, with deep sunken eyes. His lips and the inside of his mouth is stained orange from Rifampicin, one of the anti-tuberculosis drugs. Often he would just lie there, staring into space. He would rarely move and I have not seen him out of bed. When he sleeps his eyes are not fully closed and I wonder whether he had died.

During the time since I first encountered him I’d been feeling really angry about how the Pollsmoor prison let him deteriorate to such a sever extent. I mean, surely they must have noticed him wasting a way, his neurological status dropping with his physical strength to the extent where he was unable to partake in the activities of daily living.

Today I found out something about this man that completely blew my mind. He is in jail as a convicted member of the 28s gang, a gang notorious for gang-raping other men, murder and a great deal of pain and unhappiness. Were he just a member that would not have interested me, let alone impressed me, he was a general, leading men to give up their lives and humanity in order to gain a sense of entry into manhood.

I do not feel it my place to past judgement on him. I can never understand the circumstances that lead him to where he is today. I cannot condemn the man because I do not believe it is one human’s place to condemn another. It’s a truly profound thing to witness a man who must have been a terror, a despoiler of the innocent, defiler of his fellow man, to be so completely and thoroughly broken. If I put an AK-47 automatic assault rifle in his hands and injected him with adrenaline he would not even be able to aim the gun, let alone escape.

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