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This photo by Wilhelm Pretorius, dr. Lets Pretorius and Johan Pretorius were brought to Pretoria High Court in 2013. Photo: Theana Breugem
- One of the infamous Boeremag members, convicted of treason, has failed to obtain conjugal visits with his wife in jail.
- Wilhelm Pretorius also petitioned the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria for the right to have a cell phone while in prison.
- The court determined that there is no law or section in the Constitution that allows conjugal visits and that incarceration carries with it the limitation of rights.
One of the Boeremag members, convicted of treason, has failed to obtain conjugal visits with his wife and the use of a cell phone while incarcerated.
Members of Boeremag fired into infamy after claiming responsibility for a series of bomb attacks, one of which killed a woman in 2002.
The group had also planned to assassinate former President Nelson Mandela, with the aim of destroying the country’s young democracy.
In 2013, the so-called leader of the Boeremag, Lets Pretorius, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while two of his sons, Johan Pretorius and Wilhelm Pretorius, were sentenced to life imprisonment.
READ | Boeremag terrorist and ‘master bomb maker’ who tried to overthrow South Africa’s government says Leeuwkop prison rehabilitated him
His third son, Kobus Pretorius, who was the “master bomb maker” was sentenced to 20 years, of which 10 were suspended.
Artificial insemination
After getting married in 2017 while serving his sentence at the Zonderwater Correctional Center in Tshwane, Wilhelm, 41, and his young wife expressed their desire to have children and applied for permission to have access to artificial insemination technology.
This request was initially denied by Correctional Services, who later reversed their decision and granted the couple permission to attempt artificial insemination to have a child.
According to Judge Jody Kollapen, Pretorius’s wife became pregnant and subsequently gave birth to a boy.
Conjugal visits
Then Pretorius approached the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria seeking conjugal visits with his wife once a month for three hours.
He also asked the court to be allowed to receive contact visits every weekend and on holidays and to be allowed to use a cell phone that can only receive calls and receive sms messages.
In his view, Kollapen said that Pretorius based the requested relief on his right to establish and maintain healthy family relationships.
“It is based on the right to marry and found a family located in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the right to physical and psychological integrity and the right to have access to health services. reproductive health and the right to access health care services, ”Kollapen said.
While aware that part of his detention entails the limitation of his constitutional rights, Pretorius argued that the limitations imposed, in addition to freedom of movement and those required to maintain the law, are unconstitutional.
Arguing in favor of access to a cell phone in prison, Pretorius argued that the Constitution allows each prisoner to communicate with and be visited by his or her spouse, partner or closest relatives.
Judgment
Kollapen found that South African laws do not expressly recognize the right to conjugal visitation, nor could the Constitution be construed to endorse the existence of such a right as incompatible with the notion of imprisonment.
“To that extent, the relief requested by the applicant must fail.” Kollapen said.
Kollapen added that the right to contact, the right to marry or found a family in the context of the penal system does not imply the right to conjugal visits.
“… in the case of the applicant, those rights have been fully realized without the need for a concomitant right to a conjugal visit that the applicant claims exists.”
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“In conclusion, I find that the right to conjugal visits is not part of the rights that the Constitution guarantees to prisoners and that the current policy of the Department [of Correctional Services] guarantees to inmates and that the current policy of the department that prohibits conjugal visits does not constitute a limitation on the right of contact, but even if it did, it is a limitation that is consistent with the limitation on freedom that imprisonment necessarily entails.
However, Kollapen said that the issue of conjugal visits remains an important topic and has complex political and legal implications.
By having a cell phone, Kollapen said that there was sufficient opportunity for contact and that the demand for a phone could not be sustained both in terms of any rights, and in regards to the security risk that cell phones pose in the criminal context.
Kollapen referenced a planned escape in which a cell phone that was smuggled into the prison was used to make arrangements to facilitate the escape.
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