Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking a Safer South Africa

South Africa’s prisons have long stood as stark reminders of the nation’s colonial and apartheid legacies, and in recent decades, mass incarceration and sentencing inflation have persisted as entrenched facets of its criminal justice system. At the start of the democratic era, world-famous prisoner turned president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela led a government committed to humane conditions of imprisonment and restorative justice. In the decades since, however, South Africa has reverted to a reliance on prisons—yet crime and violence have persisted. These developments raise fundamental questions about the role that prisons play in shaping, and at times undermining, efforts toward a safer and more just society.

Join us for the International Book Launch and Discussion of Behind Prison Walls: Unlocking A Safer South Africa. Retired Justice Edwin Cameron—drawing on his years of direct prison inspection—alongside co-authors Rebecca Gore and Sohela Surajpal, offer a deeply informed account of South Africa’s prison system. In conversation with an expert panel, the authors will explore key topics including the colonial and apartheid roots of incarceration, the rise of mass incarceration and sentencing inflation, comparative approaches to punishment in South Africa and the United States, the role of prison oversight, and the importance of prison reform.

Panelists 

Justice Edwin Cameron was appointed a judge by President Mandela in 1994. After retiring with 25 years’ service, he was elected Chancellor of Stellenbosch University (2019-2024), and President Ramaphosa appointed him Inspecting Judge of prisons. A human rights lawyer under apartheid, Cameron helped secure the historic inclusion of sexual orientation in South Africa’s Constitution. Cameron was an outspoken critic of then-President Mbeki’s AIDS-denialist policies. He has written two memoirs, Witness to AIDS (2005), and Justice: A Personal Account (2014). He remains the only person holding public office in Africa to state publicly that he is living with HIV/AIDS. President Ramaphosa awarded him South Africa’s highest civilian honour, the Order of the Baobab (Gold). In 2023, President Masisi appointed him as a non-resident member of the Court of Appeal of Botswana.

Rebecca Gore worked as a law clerk at the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services under Inspecting Judge Edwin Cameron. She also clerked at the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She holds a law degree (LLB) from the University of Cape Town and a Master of Laws (LLM) from Harvard Law School. Rebecca was awarded the Henigson Human Rights Fellowship, where she was hosted by the Clooney Foundation for Justice and the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls. She was also awarded the Irving Oberman Memorial Prize for her paper Rethinking Crime & Punishment: Women Who Kill their Abusers in South Africa. She is currently training to become an advocate (barrister equivalent) in South Africa.

Sohela Surajpal works for the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services as a law clerk and legal researcher to Inspecting Judge Edwin Cameron. Before this, she did advocacy work on the rights of sexual and gender minorities in Africa at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights and clerked for Justice Mbuyiseli Madlanga at the Constitutional Court. She has a Master of Laws in Democracy and Human Rights in Africa from the University of Pretoria. Her interest in prisons began when she wrote her LLM mini-dissertation on Prison Abolition as a Decolonial and Human Rights Imperative in Africa.

Abadir M. Ibrahim (moderator) is the Associate Director of the Human Rights Program (HRP) at Harvard Law School. He plays a substantive and managerial role in innovating and implementing academic activities, including the speaker series, conferences, and the HRP’s various fellowships. Ibrahim’s research agenda focuses on African approaches to human rights and his broader research interests encompass the intersections between global human rights normative structures and non-Western cultural/religious institutions and traditions with an emphasis on normative ethics and religion.