Author recalls 20 years in Zim jail
The next SA Legion's Lower South Coast branch meeting will be at Douglas Mitchell on July 27 for 10:00.
Imagine spending 20 years, some 7 140 days, in a Zimbabwean jail.
This is the true story of author Kevin Woods, whose prison story captivated the audience at the SA Legion’s Lower South Coast branch meeting held at Douglas Mitchell Sports Ground recently.
Woods was sentenced to death in Zimbabwe on December 18, 1988.
He endured 20 years of living hell in former president Robert Mugabe’s prisons, the first of five people on death row.
To put it into perspective, he was imprisoned at the age of 35 and was lucky enough to make it out at 55.
He last saw his daughter, aged four, and reunited with her at 21.
After his release, he wrote the book: The Kevin Woods Story: In the Shadow of Mugabe’s Gallows.
Today, Woods lives in Durban and has made a career of public and motivational speaking, and his story is both moving and poignant.
“If I don’t make you shed a tear during my talk, I haven’t done my job,” said Woods.
Woods worked as a double agent. He had been a senior security officer in Mugabe’s Central Intelligence Organisation, where he was well placed and had access to Zimbabwe’s ultra secrets, as well as an agent for the South African Apartheid government.
“I don’t recommend being a spy as a career,” joked Woods.
During his incarceration, he spent his time in solitary confinement, shaved and stripped naked.
He was put in a tiny single prison cell where he spent five years alone without a radio, TV, books or any interaction with the outside world.
It was his lone fight to maintain his humanity, self-dignity and sanity in a prison system that belonged to the Middle Ages.
“I was fed a boiled potato, which was rolled on the ground to me by a watchful guard. I refused to eat it without a plate,” he said.
Woods’s story took his captive audience on an emotional rollercoaster, from quiet laughter to, as he warned… tears.
* The next SA Legion’s Lower South Coast branch meeting will be held at Douglas Mitchell Sports Ground on July 27 at 10:00.
Contact Wilfred Nathras on 072 639 5534.
HAVE YOUR SAY
Like the South Coast Herald’s Facebook page, follow us on Twitter and Instagram
