Coming up on
Special Assignment this week:
Episode title: Return of the Farang
Broadcast date: Thursday, 3 May 2012
Teaser ...
On 26th April 1994, Shani Krebs - a 34-year old South African - was arrested at Bangkok Airport with 2kg heroin hidden in his suitcase. Initially he was sentenced to death, then a hundred years, before his sentence was commuted to 40 years.
Eighteen years later, courtesy of an amnesty issued by the Thai Monarch he has just returned home, along with several South African drug mules arrested around the same time - the first time he has set foot on the soil of a democratic South Africa.
Special Assignment first visited Shani in prison during 2009. Now, in 2012, the show features an interview with him. His story is one of horror and hope, of second chances, lessons learnt the hardest way possible and of warnings against the trafficking of drugs.
South Africa is one of three countries - Ghana and Nepal are the other two - that will not sign a prisoner transfer treaty with other countries. This means in effect that the over 1000 South Africans incarcerated overseas, mostly for drug trafficking, are doomed to spend decades in foreign prisons, separated from their loved ones and forced to endure often horrific conditions.
Return of the Farang is produced by Hazel Friedman.
Special Assignment is on SABC3 on Thursdays at 21h10.