Under indefinite solitary detention the chief weapon is not physical torture but the removal of all human contact, stimulus and information, which erodes the prisoner's sense of self faster than questioning does. The empty cell and the uncertainty of release do the interrogator's work by making the detainee crave any interaction, even with their captors.
Ruth First, a white South African journalist and activist, was held in solitary confinement under the 90-Day law from 1963, re-detained immediately after her first 90 days expired so the state could extend her isolation indefinitely without charge. She eventually attempted suicide with sleeping pills before her release after 117 days, having given the police only limited information.
The 90-Day law let police detain a person in isolation for interrogation and simply re-arrest them at the moment of release, making the nominal time limit meaningless and the detention effectively open-ended. The law's design transferred the power to end detention from courts to the detainee's own willingness to talk.
Viewing a prisoner's obsessive attention to tiny daily rituals, counting objects, cleaning, rationing cigarettes, reveals these not as pettiness but as deliberate structures built to hold the mind together against the formlessness of isolation. What looks irrational from outside is the measurable architecture of staying sane.