“Those Prisoners Had to Feel Who Was Boss. And We Made Them Feel.”
I broke the story on a private prison in South Africa where guards inflicted horrendous abuse. But to really understand what happened, I needed to talk to the torturers themselves. “Inmates were lying everywhere,” says Sipho Kumalo, a former member of the Emergency Security Team (EST) at Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein, South Africa. “Ninjas were all over the place, shocking, kicking, .” On the inside, members of the EST – a squadron of guards in riot gear – are referred to … Read more