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The Democratic Alliance will write to the Minister of Correctional Services, Dr. Pieter Groenewald, to demand a detailed explanation of the immediate measures his Department will take to prevent future Bester-style escapes and to address the glaring gaps in prison security and anti-corruption efforts.

This follows the unsatisfactory presentation by the Department to the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services on the Department’s compliance with the remedial action of the Public Protector’s report on the escape of Thabo Bester from the Mangaung Correctional Centre.

In an ironic twist, the Department’s failure to implement real action was highlighted just as it was presenting to the Portfolio Committee - by an escape from Pollsmoor Correctional Centre. Yanga Wayithi, a 35-year-old inmate serving a sentence for theft and trespassing, managed to escape the facility while the Committee was sitting. This incident clearly demonstrates the urgency for tangible measures to prevent such escapes in the future.

In September 2024, the Public Protector Published the report on its investigation into allegations of improper conduct by functionaries of the Department of Correctional Service relating to the escape of Mr Thabo Bester from Mangaung Correctional Centre and allegation of undue delay and/or omission by the former Deputy Minister of Correctional Services to intervene regarding the incident.

The report prescribed remedial action including:

• The development of an appropriate DCS Escape Prevention Strategy and Guidelines for the MCC facility, and
• The development of a Documented Guideline which communicates how Anonymous Anti-Corruption Reports will be attended to.

The documents presented to the Portfolio Committee sadly failed to indicate any decisive action to prevent future escapes or to strengthen anti-corruption procedures within the Department of Correctional Services. Rather, the Department appears to have treated the development of these documents as a tickbox exercise with vague commitments accompanied by no details, no budget and no timelines.

Moreover:

• The Department highlighted the need to ensure proper perimeter fencing at correctional services with no indication of how this will be funded given the current budget constraints, nor when a programme of action will be rolled out; and
• The Department committed to more effective consequence management with no diagnosis of the factors that have thus far hindered effective consequence management and how these will be remedied.

The Department suggested rolling out anti-corruption workshops with no supporting evidence why these would be expected to effectively deter corruption.

South Africa’s correctional centres house dangerous, high-risk inmates. Thabo Bester himself was a convicted rapist and murderer. The possibility of these criminals escaping into society poses a serious risk to citizens in our most vulnerable communities. It is the poorest and defenseless women, children, youth and the elderly in South Africa.

No South African should be satisfied with the work done by the Department to date, and the Democratic Alliance will continue to push the Department to implement effective, measurable, and timebound actions to quickly and effectively secure South Africa’s prisons.

Issued by Kabelo Kgobisa-Ngcaba MP - DA Deputy Spokesperson on Correctional Services