Any supporter of South Africa’s racist apartheid regime could sleep soundly at night knowing that Jenkin was locked up so securely. His “crime” was being a member of the banned African National Congress Party (or ANC), which was fighting for the right for South Africa to be a democracy.
Jenkin had walked that very same route into the prison in June 1978. Now he was one and a half years into a 12 year sentence. Prison life was indescribably boring but it had its compensations. In the same corridor was Stephen Lee, another ANC member, and a friend of Jenkin’s since university. Both of them had been plotting an escape since they arrived. They soon discovered that most of their fellow prisoners were reconciled to their sentences and had abandoned any idea of escape. But not Alex Moumbaris. He had been there since 1973. When Jenkin mentioned they were wondering how to get out of the prison, Moumbaris told him that if any escape plans were being hatched, he “would definitely like to be one of the chickens”.
Plotting a daring escape made prison life less tedious for Jenkin. But Moumbaris was a mixed blessing. While most prisoners were polite and cooperative with the prison guards, he was usually hostile and insolent, and refused to keep his cell tidy. To Moumbaris, the guards were the representatives of a political regime he loathed, and he was not going to let them forget it.
But prisoners who behaved like this were singled out for close supervision, and watched far more suspiciously. Jenkin and Lee persuaded Moumbaris to change his ways and become a model prisoner. Sure enough, the guards began to take far less interest in him and the three could begin to plot an escape in earnest.
They were all now painfully familiar with the day-to-day routine of the prison. But this was actually a tremendous advantage. The three were able to predict almost exactly what their guards would be doing at any particular time of day. They also knew when they were least likely to be disturbed. The guards’ meal times, for example, were quiet times when they could almost guarantee they would not be visited. What they also found out was that after 4:30pm in the afternoon, when all the prisoners were locked in the cells for the night, only one guard remained in the prison, in a little office on the ground floor. There was also a guard on a glass-covered catwalk over the courtyard outside the prison, and another who stood outside the main exit, but he did not come on duty until 6:00pm at night.
There seemed to be two options when it came to escape. The first was relatively simple. They could break out of their cell windows, sprint through the prison yard, and climb the 6m (20ft) fence that encircled the prison perimeter. Simple it may have been, but there was also a very high risk of injury or death. For a start, a fierce dog patrolled the yard, trained to sink its teeth into any escaper.
Prisoners were allowed in the yard at certain times of the day, and Jenkin and Moumbaris tried out a few diversionary tactics. Several dogs were used on a weekly rota, and although some of them were prepared to take food from the men, others growled menacingly at even the choicest tidbits.
But there was also another problem with this plan – the armed guard on the catwalk above the yard, which was lit by fiercely bright searchlights during the night. Perhaps they could arrange a distraction to lure him away, but the more they thought about it, the less they felt the simple option was going to work.
So the three turned their thoughts to a more complicated escape. That meant going out the way they had come in. Jenkin’s heart sank at the complexity of the task before them. It would take ages to fathom out a way to get past ten locked doors.
Whatever they did had to be fool-proof, as they would only get one chance. If they were caught, providing they weren’t killed in the attempt, years would be added to their sentences, and they would be watched much more closely. They might even be transferred to much rougher prisons.
How a lock works
So the three prisoners set about working out how to get through each prison door one at a time, and what better place to start than their own cell doors? Jenkin noted the size of the keyhole and made a painstaking measurement of the shape of the “tumblers” inside, which worked the lock mechanism (see diagram above).
Jenkin worked out the size and shape of the underside of the tumblers by making an impression with a knife, on a blank sheet of paper that he carefully inserted through the keyhole.
There was a workshop in the prison, where inmates spent some of their day making furniture. This gave the three escapers a golden opportunity. They had access to materials to make their keys and the tools to make them too. Even better, the guard who was usually on duty at the workshop was so sleepy and sluggish that Jenkin used to think his brain only flickered to life when he sucked on his pipe.
Gradually, through trial and error, Jenkin managed to construct his first key. First he made the basic shape in the prison workshop, then continued to carve the all important cuts in the “bit” in his cell, with a file he had stolen from the workshop. When the key was finished he made a wonderful discovery – the same key could open every cell door on the corridor.
The keys that would unlock the other doors were all around them. They jangled from the guards’ belts and jingled in the guards’ hands. Jenkin thought their guards deliberately made as much noise as possible with these keys, to torment the prisoners. Whenever he watched a guard lock or unlock his own door he tried to see as much detail as possible of the key that was being used.
The more they planned how to get out of their seemingly impregnable prison, the more they realized there were some extraordinary lapses in security. During the day, prisoners were allowed open access to several parts of the prison, on routes which passed though several of the 10 doors to the entrance. Amazingly, keys were often left in the locks of these doors, only to be removed when the doors were locked at night. To steal a key would be too obvious, but the three men could certainly look at one, and even make an impression of it in a bar of soap, to be copied later.
Some locks never did have keys left in them, but as their knowledge of lock mechanisms increased, Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris were able to unscrew the lock from the door, or open it on the spot, measure the tumblers, and then put everything back in place. Amazingly, they were never spotted.
One lock that gave them particular trouble was the one on the steel grill that made up the outer door on each of their cells. It could only be locked from the outside. But even this was not an impossible task. Each cell had an open window overlooking the corridor and between them the escapers made an ingenious cranking device from a stolen broom handle, and other parts found in the furniture workshop. The broom key took four painstaking months to perfect, and Moumbaris kept it hidden in several pieces in his cell.
As their key collection grew they realized that many of the prison locks were very similar. They would find that one key they had would fit another lock, or would need only small adjustments to let it open another door. But the more keys they made, the greater became the problem of hiding them. As with any prison, cells were routinely searched. As far as the guards were concerned Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris were all model prisoners and none of their cells was searched with any great thoroughness, but the three escapers still had to be very careful. Their keys were hidden in jars of soap powder or sugar, and some were even buried in the prison garden, wrapped in plastic bags, and placed under particular plants so the men would remember where to find them.
The broom handle key
Another vital element of the escape was the clothes they would wear. Pretoria Prisoners had a uniform, but the inmates were allowed to order “sportswear”, which the three duly did. They also found perfectly wearable jeans and T-shirts among the rags provided by the prison for the inmates to polish the floors.
Hiding these clothes was far more difficult than hiding the keys. But in another stroke of luck, workmen came to repair a shower heater on their corridor and left open a cupboard door that was usually locked. The escapers unscrewed the lock, studied it to make a key, then returned it before a guard noticed it was missing. They now had
a good place to keep their clothes and other escape equipment. It was especially handy, because if their things were discovered, the guards would not instantly know who they belonged to.
When they started their escape they thought they had unlimited time to work on their getaway, but it slowly became apparent that this was not the case. When Jenkin first arrived at the prison he had smuggled in some money. They would need this when they escaped, but South Africa’s currency was set to change, and this money would soon be out of date.
There were still problems to overcome. Near the front entrance of the prison was an electric door which was operated by a button in the night guard’s office. Opening this was going to present special problems. Also, there were two other doors they had not been able to get a look at – one to the corridor on their way to the prison exit, the other, the final outer door to the prison. These they would have to work out on the night of their escape. Maybe one of their keys would fit, but they would also need to bring a selection of files, screwdrivers and chisels stolen from the workshop.
December 11th, 1979 was the day they chose for their escape. That evening the duty officer would be Sergeant Vermeulen. He was the most lackadaisical and dozy guard they could think of. But they would have to be quick. At 6:00pm in the evening, the guard who stood at the entrance to the prison would arrive. That gave them just one and a half hours to make their getaway…
At last, the day arrived. Fortunately there was plenty to do to keep their minds off the danger they were facing. The previous week had gone painfully slowly though, and each man had daydreamed about the friends he would be able to see again, and all the different foods he would be able to eat. Years of the dull, bland prison diet had made them all desperate to eat something really tasty.
That afternoon the three arranged their cells, intending to leave no clues behind. They knew sniffer dogs would be sent to trail them, so they washed the clothes they had worn that day, sprayed their beds with deodorant, and sprinkled pepper over the shoes they were leaving behind. All secret plans and letters were flushed down the lavatory. Jenkin found this especially difficult to do. During his long, dark days in prison he had become attached to these mementos of his yearning to escape.
Then, as a final touch, they all made dummies to fit into their beds. They stuffed prison overalls with towels, clothes and books to pad them out, and placed shoes at the bottom of their beds to look like feet.
Their fellow prisoners in the corridor, who all knew of the escape, wished them luck. Some wondered if the guards had discovered their plans and were getting ready to pounce, but there was no reason to suspect this was the case.
At showertime that afternoon, they unlocked the cupboard and arranged their clothes in order, so they could dress quickly. At supper they ate as much of the prison’s insipid soup as they could bear, and returned to their cells and waited.
The final routine of the day, where all the doors were locked and the guards left for the night, dragged out. This was a nightly ritual none of them hoped to hear again. As soon as the prison settled down they would put their months of work to the test.
So, at 4:40pm that afternoon, as other Pretorian citizens were thinking about their journey home from the office, or winding down on their factory shift, the escape began. The three all unlocked their inner cell doors with their forged keys, then Moumbaris opened his outer door with the broom handle key. He sprinted down the corridor to release Jenkin and Lee.
Then all three crept to the shower room, to get rid of their uniforms and change into everyday clothes. They put gloves on to ensure they left no fingerprints, and masks, so if a guard spotted them from a distance they could sprint back to their cells without being recognized. Then they ran to the end of the corridor, and opened the door with their third forged key.
Beyond the corridor lay a landing and stairwell. Here on the wall was a fuse box. Jenkin carefully levered it open with a screwdriver and dislodged a fuse. This immediately caused the lights to go out on the first floor. Locking the landing door behind them, the three escapers sprinted down the stairs to the ground floor, and hid in a storage cupboard in the stairwell.
After a pause, as they had all been instructed to do, their fellow prisoners on the first floor began to shout and complain that the lights had been cut off. The night guard Sergeant Vermeulen stirred in his seat. He was deep into a racy novel and in no mood to be disturbed. He lumbered down the hall, past the storage cupboard, and up to the first floor.
“Pipe down, Pipe down,” he called out. “Now what’s the trouble?”
On the first floor he found out soon enough.
“Shut up, shut up. It’s only a blown fuse. Now calm down you lot, I’ll soon have it fixed.”
The cries continued. Vermeulen wondered why the prisoners seemed so agitated tonight. He fixed the fuse quickly enough and the floor lights flickered back into life. Then he spent a good five minutes wandering up and down the corridor, banging on the steel cell doors of prisoners who were still shouting, and trying to settle everyone down.
The plan was working perfectly. While Vermeulen bullied and barked at the first floor prisoners, Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris had carefully slid from their hiding place and hurled through yet another door at the end of the stairwell, which Vermeulen had left open. Next stop was Vermeulen’s office. The three burst in, their eyes frantically searching for the button that would open the electrically operated door to the hallway of the prison. They found it soon enough and pressed. In the distance they heard a slight click.
Another three doors lay between them and the electric door they had just unlocked. The first two were sandwiched right next to each other, and they were quickly opened with forged keys. Door number seven was more of a problem. This one, none of them had been able to test before, so they had brought three keys along which they thought might fit it. The three men gathered around, and Jenkin tried the lock. This was a hurdle which would make or break their escape, and all three felt a sickening anxiety as they fumbled with the keys.
Jenkin cursed quietly as the first key refused to turn in the lock.
“One down, two to go.”
The second key slotted in and turned all the way, and the bolt slid back with a quiet click. The escapers wanted to hoot in triumph, but by now Vermeulen would be back in his little office, so they waved clenched fists in the air instead, grinning wildly.
Door number eight – the one operated by the electric switch, lay invitingly ajar down the corridor, and the three rushed through it into the outer hall of the prison.
Two more locks to go…
The escape route
Door nine, leading to the final exit, was no problem. It was opened with a key already forged for a previous door. Now one lock lay between them and freedom.
This final door was one that none of them had had the chance to test, and it was here their run of good luck finally deserted them. They found to their mounting horror that none of the keys worked. The fact that this door was a plain, ordinary wooden door, with a plain, ordinary household lock, seemed even more aggravating – all the other doors they had come through were huge, solid steel prison doors.
Time was rapidly becoming a problem too. Over an hour had passed since the three had begun their escape, and soon it would be 6:00pm. Having a guard right outside the door was certainly going to make escaping a lot more difficult.
With all the keys tried and failed, it was time to resort to brute force. Moumbaris asked for a chisel and began digging away at the door frame around the lock. Jenkin watched him with some disappointment. If everything had gone exactly to plan, it would have looked like the three men had vanished into thin air. They had locked all the doors behind them, so there would have been no indication of how they had escaped at all. Now, if they did get out, the prison authorities would be presented with an untidy pile of wood chippings and a big gouge in the door – quite a clue when it came to establishing how the three men had got out of the prison…
After chipping away, Moumbaris would try to bend back the lock mechanism, but each time it refused to budge, making a terrible clank when the screwdriver he dug into it slipped. Every time this happened, the three were certain that Vermeulen would hear them. But he was obviously engrossed in his book, and they were able to continue, undisturbed.
Finally, the mechanism gave way, and the three prepared to face the outside world. They took off their gloves and masks and put on their running shoes, trying to look as normal as possible. Then Moumbaris gave the door handle a big yank, and the door swung open with a horrible grating noise.
They peered out, expecting to see the guard on the catwalk, and half expecting to find themselves staring up into the barrel of a gun. But fortunately, the guard had walked to the other side of the courtyard and was nowhere to be seen. With the coast clear, there was no more to be done but walk out into the early evening sunlight, stroll down the street and hail a taxi.
After the escape
A few days later, Jenkin, Lee and Moumbaris had been smuggled out of South Africa to Maputo in nearby Mozambique. From here they all left for Europe. The escape embarrassed the South African government so much they forced one of the prison guards to say he had been bribed to help them.
South Africa’s Apartheid regime, which denied black people the right to vote, and other basic human rights, is now a thing of the past. The first multi-racial elections were held in 1994.
After fleeing to London, Tim Jenkin returned to his native South Africa in 1991. He works as a press officer for the ANC in Johannesburg. Steven Lee settled in London, where he found work as an electrician for a national newspaper. Alex Moumbaris went to live in Paris, where he took a job in the computer industry.
Escape Page 6
