It’s not just free folk who are struggling to eke a living as the Zimbabwean situation becomes dire apparently. We have had stories of how prisoners in the Zimbabwean Prison system are living in squalid conditions as the government struggled to look after them. There seems to be truth to those rumors as the government is said to have closed on a solution.

According to the Sunday Mail, the government is in the process of pardoning about 5000 prisoners so as to ease the pressure on the ZPS’s budget.

We are simply saying the budget is no longer sufficient to cater for our inmates so we are doing whatever we can to make sure we provide at least something for them.
Our prisons are way overpopulated, they are exceeding the carrying capacity, hence the need to come up with de-congesting measures.
We have tried the Presidential amnesty but we are now working on having more open prisons throughout the country. In an effort to decongest, we have already finished our paperwork in which 5 000 are set to benefit from the Presidential amnesty.
Secretary in the Justice Ministry, Mrs Virginia Mabhiza:

So it seems the government has actually settled on a two pronged solution. More open prisons (think of them as more like boarding prisons) and setting free some of the least dangerous criminals.

The wider public would naturally be worried about some of the people that are going to be released early. Traditionally the bulk of some pardoned prisoners have always struggled to rehabilitate themselves in society.