Prison officers using own salaries to help feed babies behind bars, Senate told

HARARE — Prison officers in Zimbabwe have been using their own salaries to help meet the nutritional needs of babies living with their incarcerated mothers, the Senate has heard, amid calls for the government to take full responsibility for children in its custody.

Senator Angeline Tongogara told Parliament on Tuesday that inadequate nutrition and other shortcomings in prisons were leaving babies dependent on assistance from outside the correctional system.

She said evidence presented to the Senate’s Thematic Committee on Gender and Development in 2022 showed that babies living in prisons often relied on donations from churches, charities and well-wishers to receive appropriate food.

“Even more concerning is that prison officers themselves reportedly contribute from their own salaries to meet the nutritional needs of these infants,” Tongogara said.

“This demonstrates compassion from individual officers but compassion should never become a substitute for policy. Good systems should not rely on personal sacrifices.”

Tongogara was speaking while moving a motion seeking reforms to the treatment of pregnant women, nursing mothers and mothers of young children in Zimbabwe’s correctional facilities.

She said 24 babies were living alongside their incarcerated mothers at Chikurubi Female Prison at the end of 2025, which she described as the highest number recorded there since 1970.

The senator said prisons were not designed to raise children and warned that inadequate nutrition, shortages of medicines and limited prenatal and postnatal care could affect their development.

“A nation should never depend on charity to feed children in its own custody,” Tongogara said.

Senator Dorothy Kadungure, who seconded the motion, said mothers lacked adequate alternatives and gender-specific facilities despite prison medical staff encouraging exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months.

Senator Mary Mliswa also questioned why the state was relying on private assistance to support children living in correctional institutions.

“If a child is lawfully residing in a State correctional institution, that child’s food, medication and necessities should not and must never depend on donations from churches, NGOs, well-wishers or even prison officers using their own salaries,” Mliswa said.

She said individual acts of compassion could not substitute for a properly funded state system.

The Senate motion calls for adequate nutrition for mothers and infants, including age-appropriate food, breastfeeding support, infant formula where necessary and essential childcare supplies without reliance on charitable donations.

It also seeks expanded open prison facilities for pregnant women and nursing mothers, greater use of noncustodial sentences for eligible offenders and improved health and early childhood development services.

Tongogara said the reforms would not absolve offenders of responsibility but would seek to prevent children from effectively serving their mothers’ sentences.

“A prison sentence should deprive an offender of liberty. It should not deprive a child of childhood,” Tongogara said.