Child killer: Norman Afzal Simons, the ‘Station Strangler’, arrives at the Kuils River magistrate’s court, Cape Town, in June 1994. (Leon Muller/AFP)
Only 159 parole profiles of offenders serving life in jail out of 4 362 are before the National Council for Correctional Services after “marathon meetings” to address the accumulation of profiles, which exceeded 4 000 last year, according to Judge Brian Mashile, chair of the NCCS.
The data highlights the chaos in South Africa’s parole system, which has seen citizens, victims, political parties and women advocacy groups express their anger about some placements, while the families of life offenders complain about delays in releasing eligible parolees.
The Mail & Guardian reported in March that four serial killers, who had collectively killed more than 105 people and were sentenced to life, were before the NCCS for parole consideration. This was not the first time that Christopher Zikode, Stewart Wilken, Cedric Maake and Lazarus Mazingane had been considered for parole.
Zikode and Wilken have been denied parole three times, while Maake and Mazingane have had their applications rejected twice.
The reasons for the rejections are unclear. This has raised the question about how many times someone can be denied parole before the system must release them.
Recently, high-profile offenders the “Station Strangler”, Norman “Avzal” Simons, and rapists and attempted murderers Frans du Toit and Theuns Kruger, were released on parole, angering many.
When the M&G asked about Simons in March, his status read as “untraceable”. Only after his release did the department of correctional services tell the M&G the error was the result of administrative issues.
As of March last year, 4 362 out of 17 373 inmates jailed for life qualified for parole consideration, according to the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS) annual report for 2021-22. Many of them had been “waiting for years to be placed”.
Mashile says the reason there has since been a significant decrease to 159 lifers awaiting parole consideration is because of meetings last year to consider more parole cases. The NCCS meets once a month for three days to look at about 100 profiles.
Among the “lifers” placed on parole in the past month were Simons, Du Toit and Kruger.
Du Toit and Kruger were placed on parole on 4 July after 28 years in prison for their assault on Alison Botha in 1994. They were found guilty of raping Botha, stabbing her more than 30 times and trying to slit her throat 16 times.
Simons was granted parole 28 years after he was handed a life sentence in 1995. He was released on 20 July in Parow, Cape Town, under strict parole conditions which would last for the rest of his life.
Simons was found guilty for the murder and kidnapping of 10-year-old Elroy van Rooyen in Mitchells Plain. His arrest took place at the time when the bodies of 21 people who had been strangled and sodomised were found, the majority of them children. Despite similarities to Van Rooyen’s murder, the state could not provide evidence to link Simons to those killings.
The release of the three men fuelled renewed scrutiny of the parole system.
Days before Simons was released, the department of correctional services and the police met Mitchells Plain residents to explain the strict conditions under which he would be released. But residents expressed their apprehension, saying experience had shown that the department did not monitor parolees and they are soon forgotten.
Among the residents were Van Rooyen’s family. They were informed two weeks in advance about Simons’ release, but refused to participate in the parole proceedings.
The parole placements of Du Toit and Kruger also revealed shortcomings in the system, because their victim was not informed about the conditions for their release.
During their sentencing at the Port Elizabeth high court in 1995, Judge Chris Jansen had referred to the two men as “inherently evil’’, recommending that they were never granted parole.
Although most of the criticism against their parole was based on Jansen’s judgment, former Justice Johann van der Westhuizen explained that recommendations were not the same as court orders.
A Mitchells Plain Community Policing Forum meeting on 16 July to discuss Simons’ parole placement. (Brenton Geach/ Gallo Images)
“A judge today cannot decide what must happen with a person in 25 years from now; it also goes against the meaning of rehabilitation.”
“There must be light at the end of the tunnel,” he said.
But Tiaan Eilerd, the man who found the severely injured Botha lying in the middle of the road after the attack, told the M&G he believed the duo could not be rehabilitated and that they had not shown any remorse for their actions.
The Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services received “constant complaints from lifers about parole delays and inconsistencies and anomalies in the parole regime”, its spokesperson Emarentia Cupido said.
In its 2021-22 annual report, the department of correctional services said the main barriers to the successful placement of inmates on parole were the lack of support systems, further charges, as well as the outcome of victim-offender dialogues, social work and psychological reports.
This, the report said, often compelled correctional supervision and parole boards to open further profiles.
A further profile is given to inmates who have appeared before a parole board but did not meet the requirements to be granted parole. The inmate is then given additional time to comply with these requirements before reappearing before the board.
But prisoners sentenced to life and their families have “also complained about inefficient or even non-existent programmes that impede their compliance with parole requirements”, Cupido said.
The correctional services department says lockdown restrictions implemented in response to the Covid-19 pandemic from March 2020 contributed towards the decline in correctional programmes and social, psychological and spiritual care services.
Participation in programmes improved by 22.5%, according to the department’s 2021-22 annual report.
When an inmate is successfully considered for parole by the NCCS, the final decision on their placement is taken by the minister of justice and correctional services.
In its proposals to the correctional services department on reforming the parole process, the inspectorate had expressed concern that the minister’s final sign-off on all life parole applications “places an unreasonable burden on the ministry”, Cupido said.
“This in JICS’s view has led to parole delays. JICS has proposed statutory reforms that would enable the minister to veto any parole the NCCS grants but would no longer require the minister’s sign-off on every application,” she said.
Lukas Muntingh, an associate professor and Africa Criminal Justice Reform (ACJR) project co-ordinator at the University of the Western Cape, agrees that the backlog of parole expectants can partially be attributed to the minister having the sole responsibility to sign off all applications.
But Muntingh pointed out that, at the dawn of democracy in 1994, there were only about 400 prisoners serving a life sentence, whereas now there are nearly 20 000.
“In no other country did life sentences increase as much as it has in South Africa. This is a direct result of the minimum sentence that was placed in the law book in 1998,” he said. This was after the death penalty was outlawed in 1995.
The 1998 statute provides that parole is an automatic process and that “every offender is considered for possible placement on parole upon reaching their minimum detention period regardless of the nature of their offences”.
As a result, Muntingh said, the scope of life as a punishment option was made much wider than the death penalty ever would have been. In other words, a life sentence became much more than just an alternative to the death penalty.
From 1949 until 1994, a year before the death penalty was revoked, there was not one year when more than 50 offenders were sentenced to life imprisonment, according to a 2008 study by the ACJR, which was then known as the Civil Society Prison Reform Initiative.
(Graphic: John McCann/M&G)
The list of prisoners serving life sentences increased when, in 2008, regional courts — and not only high courts — were allowed to impose life imprisonment. In that year, prisons held about 8 000 inmates serving life sentences. This number has more than doubled over the past 15 years.
Another significant development took place in 2004 when the Correctional Services Act was amended to allow all offenders sentenced to life imprisonment from 1 August 1993 to 30 September 2004 to be considered for parole after serving a minimum imprisonment of 12 years and four months. Lifers sentenced after 1 October 2004 must serve a minimum of 25 years before becoming eligible for parole.
Applying the 2004 amendment to the cases of Simons, Kruger and Du Toit meant they legally became eligible for parole at the latest in 2009 but it would be another 14 years before their release.
Inspecting judge Edwin Cameron said the extension of life sentences before eligibility for parole was “part of a trend of severe sentence inflation that started with the enactment of minimum sentences in 1998”. Cameron publicly described this as a “wrong turn” taken by parliament.
Muntingh said there were gaps in the parole system and questioned the efficacy of parole monitoring, based on the data from the department of correctional services.
In its 2021-22 annual report, the department conceded that it was concerned about reports of crimes committed by offenders who had been released on parole.
“Cases of violations due to re-offending were recorded even on serious offences,” it said.
Justice Minister Ronald Lamola told parliament in a written response in March that the total number of parolees who had violated their parole conditions annually since January 2020 was 34 660. Of these, 15 557 had been rearrested.
But, according to the 2021-22 annual report and that of the previous year, 99% of all parolees did not violate their parole conditions.
The data does not differentiate between those jailed for life, and prisoners serving non-life sentences.
“Judging by the number of applications for revocation considered by the NCCS per month, very few lifers violate their parole conditions,” judge Mashile said.
“This suggests that parole programmes are assisting offenders to reintegrate into society.”
Muntingh expressed concern about structural problems in South Africa’s 52 parole boards.
“How do you keep decision-making consistent and ensure each parole board interprets the guidelines the same and that they each have a complete profile [of the specific inmate] in front of them?” he asked.
The department has an answer to Muntingh’s question. It says its plan for the parole system “intends to improve consistency and quality of parole decisions, ensure greater compliance with the provisions of the Promotion on Administrative Justice Act … and to increase public transparency and participation in the parole processes”.
In 2016, the justice and correctional services department announced the appointment of a task team to drive the re-engineering of the system. As a result, the drafting of a parole position paper is underway.
The revision of the 20-year-old system focuses on the entire correctional programme from admission to the placement of offenders on parole.
“Challenges identified with the current parole system are administrative in nature,” correctional services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo said.
“[The department] acknowledges that the current system that reviews the decisions of the CSPBs [correctional supervision and parole boards] is not fully in line with the principles of the Promotion of Administration of Justice Act in terms of providing offenders/victims and other interested parties with the right to refer decisions of the CSPBs.”
According to the department, it is difficult for offenders to challenge decisions outside of court and “the current process is long and offenders find it difficult to have their cases reviewed”.
Ultimately, the reform of the parole system will aim to ensure that dedicated structures are established to appoint officials with the required skills and qualifications and the alignment of rehabilitation interventions for offenders.