Election of Chairperson; Briefing by Department on their Annual Performance Plan; with Minister and Deputy Minister

Meeting report

Election of Chaiperson

The meeting opened with Ms A Ramolobeng (ANC) being voted in as Chairperson of the Committee. She proceeded to invite the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), led by the Minister, Dr Pieter Groenewald, to brief the Committee on their annual performance plan.

Minister's overview

Dr Pieter Groenewald, Minister: Correctional Services, congratulated the Chairperson on her election and the Committee Members on their appointment. He also thanked and congratulated his Deputy Minister, Ms Lindiwe Ntshalintshali. He said he had served on the Portfolio Committee of Police for more than 30 years, so he knew how important transparency and accountability were for this Committee. He asked that every Member and the Department work together so that where there were problems, they all held hands in resolving them to better serve the people of South Africa.

He said there were many challenges facing the Department – overcrowding, understaffing, rundown facilities and infrastructure, scandals of corruption and fraud, and rampant gang activities in the correctional facilities. The Department had to address these illnesses, and he was excited to work with everyone in solving these problems.

Minister Groenewald said the reduction of overcrowding, although complex, remained a high priority for the Department. It was constrained by budget cuts, but it would inject some impetus on the delivery of infrastructure projects and find ways to complete at least 17 infrastructure projects in this 2025 financial year. He believed that this would go a long way towards tackling overcrowding. He committed to playing an active role to ensure that these projects were completed on time, without corruption and exploitation. The Department could not allow an escalation in cost because contractors did not comply with the deadlines.

The entire criminal justice system had to work as a team to tackle the high number of remand detainees awaiting trial and sentencing in correctional facilities. Thought must be given to how people remanded for petty offences, and those who could not afford bail of R1 000 or less, were dealt with. The creation and establishment of South African communities required a multifaceted approach that among others, includes programme implementation that seeks to prevent and combat crime with self-sustainability and corrections where needed. It was thus crucial to enforce the rehabilitation of offenders to help them to develop life skills, build constructive daily routines and incubate good habits – hence educational and vocational training was part of the Department’s priorities. These priorities remained critical components of a sustainable correctional service system. Offenders participating in production workshops would increase from 65% in 2025 to 70% in 2027. When more funding became available, resources could be increased, which would enable the Department to have 100% participation in its production lines.

Minister Groenewald said the Department was experiencing difficult financial times and would have to do more with less. This meant securing quality service delivery and getting value for money when procuring goods and services. If the Committee and the Department all held hands and built together, the result would be collective service delivery.

He closed by saying he was excited and looking forward to the Seventh Administration.

Deputy Minister's comments

Deputy Minister Ntshalintshali congratulated the Minister, the Chairperson and Members of the Committee on their election.

She said the Department’s presentation would table the Department’s plan of how they would change and rehabilitate people so that they were ready to be reintegrated into society.

Though the Department faced challenges of overcrowding and budget cuts, she believed working together with the Committee would assist the Department in advocating for it to receive more budget. The DCS had more clients they housed and must rehabilitate, but if it suffered budget cuts, it could not execute its tasks.

She requested that the Committee work with the Department in changing lives and ensuring that the systems that were in correctional facilities were respected, so that people came back rehabilitated and ready to be reintegrated into their communities.

She said the Department would remain accountable to the Committee and respect it. When the Committee needed them on a scheduled or an ad hoc basis, they would attend, because the DCS was here to serve the people of South Africa. The Government of National Unity (GNU) was new to everyone, and the Department was committed to delivering according to its mandate.

Discussion

Mr J Engelbrecht (DA) welcomed the presentation, and commented that under normal circumstances, the Committee would have had a number of weeks to go through the presentation, but unfortunately, now there was very little time and there were brand new Members in the Committee who may struggle to understand so much information. However, he acknowledged that the discussions must continue, because the Committee had a deadline to pass the Department’s budget.

He said the DCS was a receiving Department, in that most of its problems emanated from somewhere else, and it had to deal with them. Referring to the ever-growing problem of remand detainees, he asked what the DCS had done to engage Department of Justice (DoJ), because the dysfunctionality within the DoJ was starting to eat into DCS's resources. The Department had a special remission a while back, where they had to release sentenced prisoners to make space for unsentenced prisoners, and the Department could not build enough prisons to accommodate them.

In the last administration, he had served in the combined Justice and Correctional Services Portfolio Committee, and the number of court hours the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) had in relation to the successful cases was absolutely shocking. People spend a lot of time in correctional facilities, and the DCS could not even plan accordingly on how many people it would receive – the Department sees a truckload of people arriving at their facility, and they count them as they get out of the truck.

He asked for an update on the night courts, and whether there were plans to reduce the number of remands by sentencing them to prisons where they could then participate in meaningful programmes. The challenge with remands was that they sat there every day waiting for their next court appearance, and they might come back or they might not.

He then commented that on the measurement that the Department uses to measure its success rate. He said that instead of counting the number of participants in rehabilitation programmes, a true measure would be the rate at which the participants came back into correctional facilities. The Department’s mandate was for a criminal to go through a range of release mechanisms, and whether it was successful or not was whether or not the person came back or became a meaningful contributor to society, and there were no accurate figures for that.

He questioned whether the rehabilitation rate was still relevant, or had become redundant over time. He asked whether released inmates were given the opportunity to find employment. Something that was out of the Department’s control was the shaming aspect of people who had been to prison. This was accentuated by crime being characterised by socio-economic issues and the huge inequality in society.

Previously, as a matter of emphasis, the Department had intended to reduce litigation against it. He asked what it was going to do to achieve this. How much more would be spent on the contentious Integrated Inmate Management System, the implementation of which had dragged for an awfully long time, and where there had also been litigation against it? He asked whether it was worthwhile to pursue the matter further.

He lastly mentioned that the Department’s role was the re-integration of participants into society. However, when he looked at the programmes, this particular one was the smallest. Lots of money was spent on other programmes, but if the DCS failed at successfully integrating the former inmates, the chances of that person committing crime again were high.

Ms D James (Action SA) commented that the Department had a programme which addressed drug abuse in the facilities as part of their rehabilitation strategy. She had a background as an activist, where she dealt extensively with the issue of drug abuse.

She raised concerns about the use of cell phones by inmates inside the facilities. Video clips of inmates were seen on Facebook and TikTok, where inmates looked like they were on holiday.

Ms James said the Department had spoken about inmates leaving the facilities to go back to committing crime, but now they did not even need to leave the facility to commit crimes. So many gang leaders continued to head up their gangs from the prison cells. She would have liked to refer to quite a few cases which she had dealt with, where inmates were moved to maximum correctional facilities but continued to use cell phones because of corrupt warders.

She asked what the Department was going to do to deal with crime within the facilities, with zero tolerance for the use of cell phones, the issue of corrupt warders, addressing gang activities and drug violence. She asked what support there was for those who entered the facility and were already addicted to drugs.

Ms B Diale (EFF) asked what the common security breaches were in the correctional facilities and what measures the Department had to curb such incidents.

On a lighter note, she commented that the APP had many acronyms. She requested that, in the future, the Department include an index of acronyms because not everyone may understand what they mean.

She asked to what extent the DCS experienced overcrowding in facilities, and what the risks resulting from the overcrowding were.

Why did the Department have a target of a qualified audit report instead of a clean audit report, when the Auditor-General's (AG's) report would have indicated the areas where the Department was going wrong?

She said overcrowding was a worsening situation, as indicated on slide 32. In the 2020/21 fiscal year, overcrowding was at 27%, and it has increased to 46% currently. The Department had stated that it would not go beyond 50%, but this downward spiral showed it would be beyond 50% because they did not have enough space to house offenders.

Ms Diale said R154 million was being spent on rental facilities and prison structures, and asked whether the Department had made a comparative analysis to assess whether this amount had increased or reduced over the last five years.

Mr M Moela (ANC) thanked the delegation led by the Minister for their commitment to ensuring pressing matters like overcrowding and corruption among warders would be addressed. He said that the issue of institutionalised gangsterism was becoming a norm in the facilities.

Concerning skills development, he asked how the Department was tracking the effectiveness of the programmes it implements to rehabilitate offenders and integrate them back into the community, and how it ensured that there were no repeat offenders.

The Chairperson said the report mentioned various facilities requiring additional bed space. Kutama had a bed capacity of 3 024, and they could put in an extra 300 beds. She asked whether the Department had utilised that space, and, if so, why they needed more. She sought clarity on whether that was the outsourced additional accommodation they had been referring to.

She asked if the Department had managed to deal with the matter of the fire that broke out at Kutama, and whether they had been able to integrate all the inmates who were at Kutama into the surrounding correctional facilities.

She commended the Department on its equity plan, especially as it related to women. The Committee had been crying since 2021, because equity in terms of women had been slightly down. At least it was now at 50%, and she hoped it would not drop.

Concerning office accommodation, she asked whether the R49 million was inclusive of the Tzaneen Correctional Centre, because the last time this was raised, they still did not have accommodation for officials. The officials needed to travel for work. She asked if there were plans for the institutions that did not have residences for officials.

She commented that as the DCS was now a standalone department, and the Minister of Finance would be considerate towards it not having budget cuts.

Mr S Nomvalo (MK) asked whether any measures were in place to ensure the safety of the employees in the facilities, particularly the prison warders.

Did the rehabilitation programme include any community activities? The influx of inmates could be avoided by engaging in community programmes. He knew that it fell within the scope of the South African Police Service (SAPS), but because of budget problems, he believed the Department also had a role to play in adopting the programmes that prevented crime.

He complained that receiving the Department's report a few hours before the meeting was unfair to the Members, especially the new ones, because they did not have sufficient time to familiarise themselves with it and engage in it from an informed perspective. He asked for the reason for the report being submitted late. In future, the Committee wanted a bundle of all the important attachments to the report -- for example, attachments like the findings of the AG, so that they could cross-reference them to the report.

The Chairperson clarified that Members had received the report on the day of the meeting because the list of Committee Members was received only at 23h00 the night before this meeting. Even though the Department was ready with the report, it could not be distributed because it was unknown to whom it must be sent. The late distribution of the report was no one’s fault.

DCS's response

Minister Groenewald said he understood the frustration expressed by Members about receiving the report late. He said the Department would ensure that going forward, reports were sent timeously.

Mr Makgothi Thobakgale, National Commissioner, Department of Correctional Services, said the DCS was part of the justice, crime prevention and security (JCPS) cluster. This was a cluster of departments that directly had strategies and plans to combat crime and those that were indirectly contributing to the programmes to combat crime. Cabinet approved the integrated crime and violence prevention strategy in 2022. All government departments were invited to participate in the implementation of the strategy.

The Department contributed from two perspectives. The first was the perspective of victims of crime, or families that were affected by crime. It had community outreach projects that included skills development, job opportunities and outreach programmes that targeted community structures and organisations. For example, the DCS contributes to the school nutrition programme (SNP) by assisting schools in establishing gardens and refurbishing some of the schools where they have infrastructure challenges. The Department did this using the parolees who would have received skills development training. The second perspective was crime prevention campaigns, where the Department gets into communities through campaigns.

An example was when the Department worked with the community of Lusikisiki for six months because that community was identified as the number one location for rape. They had developed a plan to work with young males and the elderly to ensure that the boy child did not grow to end up committing rape. This intervention had led to a reduction of rape cases in that community.

Concerning the safety of employees, working in the JCPS cluster was a risk that the employees faced. The first exposure was the fact that there was a population of about 156 000 offenders. The staff complement was less than 40 000 right now, and not more than 40% of the staff were security officials. One warder was looking after more than five inmates alone. The system the DCS was supposed to have was a buddy system, where a security official watches over a warder’s back, and the warder does the same. This was not possible at present, because the Department did not have enough staff nor the financial resources to implement it.

Treasury had demanded that the Department implement the budgeting and resource planning tool. This tool required a reduction in the compensation of employees’ (COE's) budget compared to the overall budget. This was to make sure the Department spends less on employee compensation and more on service delivery. The challenge was that DCS service delivery was basically the compensation of employees. For example, for the DCS to implement rehabilitation programmes like formal education for offenders, they needed teachers. Teachers could not go into classrooms alone, because it was a security risk. They managed the situation currently by working in shifts. Sometimes, that did not work because officials had to end up working double or triple shifts.

Officials were provided with security equipment to be able to diffuse a situation and to defend themselves when they were under attack. The movements in correctional facilities were planned in such a manner that they maximised the number of officials that would be managing the movement. For example, every morning around 05h00, they moved between 500 to 1 000 remands per correctional service facility to court. It was the same procedure when they returned to the facilities in the evening. Some officials needed to accompany offenders to hospitals. There needed to be enough security officials for those processes. Some officials were also attacked where they stayed. This was prevalent for officials who made decisions about transfers, those who served on committees that considered sentencing, or parole officials. A female head of a centre had been shot while driving home from work. She had survived, but another official who was leaving home to go to work in Thohoyandou had not survived his shooting. The sad reality was that these cases were not reported by the media like those involving police officers.

He said they had implemented a repair programme at Kutama. The yellow and blue facilities had been completed, and the remaining one was the green facility. Once the green facility was completed, an additional 324 beds would be available. Contractors had been engaged for bed capacity in Mangaung and Kutama before the Thabo Bester issue. The fees they were charging had been so too high that the Department could not accept the quotes at the time, and all parties could not reach an agreement in terms of utilising that additional capacity. Kutama would be in full operation from 1 August.

The Department did offer skills development programmes. There was a self-sufficiency and self-sustainability strategy to improve production at the enterprises, which were spaces where skills development courses were offered. For example, there were farms, wood workshops, metal workshops, and textile workshops, where the uniforms worn by officials were produced by offenders. Through these programmes, they were then able to ensure that when offenders left the facilities, they had the skills to survive. There were arts and crafts programmes that resulted in opening of art and craft exhibition centres, where people could buy art and crafts produced by offenders. The money generated was reinvested back into those programmes and given to offenders stipends to buy amenities that they needed within the facility.

Regarding the qualified audit, the Department was following a programme that was moving it towards clean audits. The findings of the AG had been reducing over time and in the 2024/25 fiscal year, the Department would be striving to achieve a clean audit. Moving from a disclaimer to an unqualified audit required a comprehensive audit action plan. When they reflect back on the journey from the previous financial period, they had implemented 100% of the actions that they were supposed to implement to cure the matters of emphasis or findings.

Mr Thobakgale agreed that overcrowding was worsening, because the DCS was at the receiving end of the criminal justice system value chain. When SAPS announce “Operation Shanyela” and they arrest 10 000 offenders in a month, those offenders get processed through the courts and the NPA and then end up in correctional facilities. There were those who spent time that was unnecessary in the correctional facilities because it took too long for SAPS to conclude investigations. Some of these investigations take more than 18 to 24 months. Some remands were given low bail amounts, but because of their financial situation, they stayed in the facilities because they could not afford to pay those low amounts. The Department would make applications sometimes for bail review, and of the 25 000 submitted last year, 4 000 had been successful.

The DCS attends a forum chaired by the Chief Justices of the various provinces, and that is where it tables its grievances. The Department tried something new in 2023 by introducing a behaviour modification programme for remand detainees. There was no additional budget allocation for this, and the DCS did not get additional staff members to implement it. The programme was devised to prevent remanded persons who remained in the facilities for extended periods of time from being socialised into crime in a structured way.

He acknowledged it was true that there was a problem of drug abuse in the facilities. He said that when an offender was sentenced, before they got into a formalised programme, they were assessed psychologically and physically, and a sentence plan was developed accordingly within seven days of their detention. The sentence plan would also include health issues, and would address the type of crime that the offender had been arrested for. Case officers and case management committees would follow and review the progress over time. When an offender came in, they would be classified as considerable risk and had to work towards being low risk, where they would be able to work in places like farms, which indicated they were well on their way to being rehabilitated.

The use of cell phones was a problem. The DCS has a bagless policy for officials, but there are still those officials who smuggle them in, and the Department fires them on a daily basis. Some members of the community also smuggle in phones during visiting hours. When this is discovered, cases are opened against those people, who then come in and are remanded also. St Albans had a huge problem with this issue. Members of the community, especially females, do not want to be body searched, citing humiliation and other issues. However, when the profile of that facility had been checked, close to 90% of the articles smuggled in were brought in by females who were visiting offenders. The only way to overcome this problem was the use of scan technology, but a limitation on its use was that it jams other emergency communication devices. The technology proposed and tested now was one that works only within the facility. When one enters the facility, the cell phone stops working, but when one exits, it works again.

There was a strategy to deal with gangs. There was a 24-hour security incidents system, and meetings which took place every week to keep the Department's fingers on the pulse of incidents. These meetings assessed trends of the types of incidents and their frequency. The challenge was always the exposure of first-time offenders coming into facilities where there were those who had been there for years. Sometimes, the police send requests for special specific accommodation for some offenders who were assisting in investigations, and if the DCS did not provide special accommodation for them, they were left vulnerable to being attacked in the facilities.

He admitted that the social re-integration branch had not been given the attention it was supposed to have been given over the years, and they had reworked the structure by implementing a Chief Director who focuses on community social re-integration. The DCS was also able to enter into memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with the private sector and municipalities to roll out some programmes. Other stakeholders included churches and counsellors because they were part of the community that a parolee was released into. The Department helps parolees find jobs by giving them letters of recommendation and by speaking to potential employers. Every parolee had a parole officer looking after them.

The Department had done an audit of the cases that were in court, and allocated specific officials to work on those cases. The weakness identified in the previous fiscal year was that as the DCS got court judgments that talked to their policies and procedures, they realised that they had not been reviewing those policies and procedures in light of all the judgments passed so that another offender would not take them to court for the same thing. There was a case in point of offenders who believed that it was correct for them to have laptops in their cells at night for purposes of studying. Laptops had modems, and that posed a risk for the facilities. For the DCS to fight that case, it would need to review its policies and then go to court and state what measures were in place for offenders to study.

The areas of risk, as flagged in the audit report, included information technology and the infrastructure. The issue that the Minister had raised of contractors not finishing projects on time and costs escalating was that the work was carried out by the Department of Public Works (DPW). This meant the DCS was audited on projects implemented by the DPW, which was a risk to the DCS if DPW did not fulfil their mandate.

The Department was working with the DPW and the National Skills Fund to structure a job employment opportunity programme. It was still in the conception stage. The idea was to involve victims of crimes or families affected, the parolees and members of communities, to work at DCS farms for skills development and food security. Once the programme was finalised, the Department would review it to ensure it carries no risk.

Mr Thobakgale said that the Department was reviewing its rehabilitation programmes in light of the new spate of crimes, like kidnappings for ransom, sabotage crimes, economic crimes etc. The crimes being committed now involved highly organised groups or movements, and they were more high technology types of crimes compared to the past.

The issue of re-offending also troubles the Department. Re-offenders commit crimes that are more heinous than those they did before. Some offenders commit crimes as a first entrance into the criminal system, but they then develop further into other crimes. The DCS was working with the National Institute for Crime Prevention and Re-integration of Offenders (NICRO) on a study of re-offending, which includes obtaining accurate figures. The Department had its own model that it utilised to measure re-offending. Re-offending was measured against parolees. The percentage was low, but was subject to debate because crime levels continued to increase.

He concluded by saying that the population of offenders in the correctional system was changing, as more heinous crimes were being committed. On average, an offender spends ten years in a correctional facility, so the sentenced population would not necessarily increase, but the remand population was ever increasing. The solution to crime was not to continue building more facilities.

Mr Lebogang Marumule, Acting Chief Financial Officer, DCS, responded regarding the leases, and said that the expenditure kept increasing annually because the Department did not own any buildings, so it did not necessarily control that expenditure.

Mr Evans Maponya, Chief Deputy Commissioner: Information Technology, DCS, commented on the integrated management system, and said that the Department had not spent money on the system since the arbitration process in January 2020. The DCS had 243 sites, and each site ran an offender management system, which was the DCS legacy system, and databases were running in every facility. Trying to consolidate data from all these systems was a logistical nightmare. The Department was now relicensing the ANR information technology (IT) system so that they could consolidate and centralise the database that they had. This would speed up reporting and also try to give a single view of an offender.

The challenge of centralisation was that most correctional facilities were in underdeveloped areas, so bandwidth had also become a bit of a challenge. These were the challenges they were dealing with slowly, but ultimately, they would overcome them.

National Commissioner Thobakgale responded regarding staff accommodation, and said that with its limited funds, the Department had a project in Mthatha where a contractor was on site building staff accommodation. The new site in Burgersdorp came with staff accommodation. In Tzaneen, the planning and design were complete, and the DCS was waiting on the DPW to commission the construction process. It identified the land adjacent to Tswelopele Correctional Services as land that belonged to government and was to be utilised for staff accommodation facilities. This was based on the limited funds that the Department has.

The Chairperson asked what had happened to the DCS moving away from being dependent on the DPW, and doing work on their own.

Mr Thobakgale responded that they were busy with that process. The only limitation was the rate at which the DCS was appointing artisans. The leasing costs that were going up had been a concern to the DCS, so they were about to build their own community corrections office. The plans and procurement of materials had been done. The only thing pending was the Minister and Deputy Minister’s processes. In Witbank, the DCS had established a brick-making plant. The challenge with DPW was that they issued an instruction indicating they would be offloading a number of components from the maintenance plan they were supposed to implement for the Department. The DCS did not have the funds to maintain those properties because the DPW charges user charges, which were incorporated into the DCS budget by Treasury. The DPW charges about R712 million, which the DCS is supposed to pay. If it does not pay, it becomes indebted to the DPW, and so the facilities would not be maintained. He was still trying to nudge the CFO so that those funds were not all released in this fiscal year, because the report the DCS was receiving was that their facilities were increasingly experiencing failing critical components like boilers. He closed by saying that the Minister and Deputy Minister would continue to help the Department deal with some of these challenges.

Minister Groenewald suggested that the Committee keep a record of responses to which they could refer back and seek further clarity even at a later stage.

Deputy Minister Ntshalintshali said she was pleased with Members who served on other committees which feed into this Committee, and who had raised some of the issues which had come in those other committees. As a receiving department, the DCS was really struggling with overcrowding and in keeping people accordingly to the laws and prescripts described for such work. It had to ensure that the Department was not in breach of offenders' constitutional rights.

Concluding comments

The Chairperson requested the Committee secretary to circulate the DCS’s legacy report to help Members familiarise themselves with what the Committee had been dealing with. The legacy report would include matters dealt with by the Justice Committee, because Correctional Services and Justice were previously under one committee. However, in the Seventh Administration, the President had decided that these two Departments should be under two separate committees.

She said that personally she believed oversight enhanced better understanding of the Department than receiving reports. Going to the centres gave one a true definition and understanding of what happens at the correctional centres, especially seeing centres which were not well maintained.

She commented that the Committee would walk with the Department on the journey to correcting some of the challenges so that inmates experience the best practice, and in that way, litigation by inmates against the Department would be avoided.

Mr Engelbrecht emphasised to new Members that the Committee was known in the Sixth Administration as the Committee that did not engage in political bickering. This was left for the House, where they could call him ugly, and he could say they were stupid, or whatever anyone desired at that stage. He said this Committee was dedicated to dealing with issues as and when they arose to assist the Department in achieving its specific set goals, and he truly hoped that would continue going forward.

The Chairperson responded that she believed the Committee had a talented team of Members who would put the best interests of the tasks at hand at the forefront of their engagements.

 She thanked the Minister, Deputy Minister, Committee Members and representatives from the DCS for a meaningful report and discussions. She emphasised that both the Department and the Committee must work together in trying to mitigate the challenges. All parties were there to serve the people of South Africa by accounting for every little thing to ensure the Department was effective.

The meeting was adjourned.