1 JULY 2025

House Chairperson

 Members of the Executive – Minister and Deputy Minister

The National Commissioner

Inspecting Judge – Judge Cameron

Members of the Portfolio Committee

Honourable Members

Our budget vote derives its mandate from the apex priorities of the National Development Plan which is the governmental blueprint for our country’s transformation in addressing the triple challenges of unemployment, poverty and inequality. 

The department of correctional service has been allocated a budget of R29.2 Billion for 2025/26 which will increase to R32 billion in 2027/28. This is the budget that the department must utilize to ensure that everyone in South Africa is safe and feel safe as expected by the National Development Plan: Vision 2030. The NDP further tasks the department to ensure that woman are able to walk freely at night and children play safely outside in our communities.

Rehabilitation and social Reintegration

Honourable Members with this budget the department is also expected to ensure that all those entrusted in its care, are rehabilitated, get education and much neded skills to refrain from reoffending. Currently the department has a total of 19 schools of which 10 are youth schools registered by the department of Basic Education.

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Self – Sufficiency and Sustainability.

To supplement this budget the department needs to put more emphasis on their self sufficiency and sustainability framework.

The department runs production workshops, bakeries and farms in some of their correctional facilities across the country. The committee noted the plans of the department to have 72% of offenders participate in agricultural activities while 70% participate in production workshops. The committee will be closely monitoring these targets to ensure that correctional facilities become self sufficient.

Capital works and infrastructure maintenance

DCS is a department with specialized and complex infrastructure needs.

The committee received a briefing in February on the state of DCS infrastructure projects, and members were not pleased about the non-performance and poor performance of the many contractors appointed by DPWI – most work is behind schedule and in some areas where work has been done the maintenance is already regressing.

The committee was shocked to observe some of the conditions and lack of maintenance in correctional centers.  The observations include unkept kitchens and non-working pots, the committee was forced to recommend the closure of Durban Westville center kitchen because it did not meet the minimum health and safety requirements. We noted several other kitchens that have had to close down due to lack of maintenance or similar matter as Durban Westville.

The Department has raised several challenges to the committee for lack of repairs and maintenance of critical infrastructure; including user fee charges from the DPWI.

While we have recommended to the department to look into self-sufficient means for immediate infrastructure repairs and make use of offender labour where appropriate, under a skills development curriculum, we call on the DPWI as the custodian of all government building to take seriously their mandate to repair, refurbish and maintain critical infrastructure.

We welcome the Departments move to provide additional bed space in the 2025/26 financial year.

PPP facilities

We note that the term of contract for the two privately run prison facilities Mangaung in Free State and Kutama in Limpopo are coming to an end in 2026 and 2027 respectively. We welcome the decision of the  department to takeover the two privately run facilities and have them operate under the full control of the Department of Correctional Services.

 We must reiterate that the provision of law and order is a key function of any government and this duty should not be delegated to the private sector. The success of any correctional facility should be judged on its ability to rehabilitate offenders and to reduce rates of recidivism. Up to so far private prisons have failed to demonstrate that, they are cost effective, innovative or produce better results on the rates of recidivism.

Despite the fact that the issue of privatization is recognized by legislation, the issue of PPP facilities remains deeply controversial and requires us to look into the affordability, value for money and risk allocation for such contracts.

If we do not act swiftly in terms of our state of readiness to take over privately run facilities, we run the risk of privatization continuing to consume significant public funds without deliveringmeasurable outcomes over public correctional facilities.

In the interest of transparency, accountability and improved oversight – we are looking forward to these contracts reaching their end of term.

Remand detainees with bail sum of R1000 and less

We are concerned with the staggering cost to keep and maintain remand detainees in correctional facilities, which currently cost the department R482. 00 a day and just above R13 000 per month for each detainee.

Taking into consideration the pressing issue of overcrowding in our correctional facilities, and that many remand detainees are in the centers for month and years simply because they cannot afford to pay bail, which at times its as low as R300 -00.

I am reminded of the former Chief Justice Pius Langa’s observations on transformative constitutionalism and the adjudication of constitutional rights in Africa. He made a worthwhile observation of law from below and the need to address poverty, which perpetuates inequality. He highlighted the need to promote economic security as a prerequisite for realizing individual freedom and social justice.   when he noted that prison in south Africa is for the poor and many are stuck there because they cannot afford the cost of liberty. We cannot have a system that further perpetuates the injustices that our constitutional democracies, so desperately tries to correct.

It is in this context that we congratulate JICS for their efforts to undertake a feasibility study on  a pilot bail fund project for remand detainees with a bai amount of R1000.00 – although this is a band aid to the pressing challenge of overcrowding, we trust it will in the meantime assist with the immediate  decongestion of our facilities as we work toward more sustainable means in the future, while also correcting the unintended consequence of discriminating offenders based on their socio economic status.

There are two legislative provisions which are in theory supposed to assist with managing overcrowding in correctional facilities but are in reality producing very minimum results; those are the provisions of section 63A of the Criminal Procedure Act and section 49G of the Correctional Services Act.

The departments 2023/24 Annual report records that it submitted a total of 19 391 referrals to court under section 63A but only 5091 (26,25%) of these were successful and 9667 applications were referred to the courts under section 49G and this yielded a very tiny success rate of 3% being successful.

We call on the department of Justice and other key stakeholders in the criminal justice system to take seriously its relationship with the Department of Correctional Services because most of its challenges do not emanate from DCS not delivering on its mandate.

Review of legislation

 We are pleased that the Department of Correctional services will be reviewing the Correctional Services Act, 111 of 1998. This will also allow the Committee to make inputs on areas that the committee think should be amended or strengthened including the Section 73 of the act to deal with the management of foreign national inmates in our correctional facilities. We call for a review of section 73(1)(a) and (2) of the Correctional Services Act which provides for the length and form of the sentence.

We intend to review this provision specifically as it relates to the incarceration of foreign nationals to make a provision   for foreign nationals who are serving life sentences to serve their sentences in their countries of origin because of the costs associated with keeping foreign inmates in correctional facilities.

We encourage the Minister to consult further with the Minister of Home Affairs on the intention of reviewing this provision.

Conclusion

Chairperson The ANC supports the budget vote as it is in line with our Manifesto commitments of creating a safer South Africa and the broader DCS vision of 2068 of shaping corrections for the future. We support this budget in the context of continuity and change – which is to appreciate the good work done but to also offer insight and the recommendations in areas of concern as I have alluded above . The ANC supports the Budget Vote, I Thank You.