Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour said this week he is so ”gatvol” with corrupt warders who let prisoners escape that he will henceforth disregard procedures, suspend them without pay and then fire them.
”They can waste as much money as they want on the CCMA [Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration],” he said at an imbizo at Johannesburg prison. ”At the end of the day, they will be the ones left without assets, not me. The national commissioner and the area manager are free to follow procedures if they want, but I am gatvol [sick and tired].”
The imbizo was part of his road show to prisons across the country to hear first-hand from prisoners, warders and members of the public about aspects affecting them and their prisons.
Balfour said it is clear that in many instances escapees do so because of collusion with prison warders.
With regard to the escape of five armed prisoners, who allegedly made a dash for it after overpowering guards and hijacking a social worker at Westville prison in Durban earlier in September, Balfour said: ”The prisoners moved from the fourth floor, passing through numerous gates, but nobody raised the alarm. Do you want me to believe there was no collusion?
”In King William’s Town [where there was another escape] the master key was lost … How do inmates get hold of a master key and firearms unless people are corrupt, inefficient or plain lazy?”
Balfour said that officials who were found to be in cahoots with escaping prisoners will be criminally, not departmentally, charged, ”to let them feel what it’s like to be on the other side. I have come to the conclusion [that there will be] no more processes. I will fire you [warders present at the imbizo] and suspend you without pay. It is clear that tougher measures are needed.”
Balfour’s spokesperson, Graham Abrahams, said the minister did not mean that he will ignore industrial law procedures but rather that he ”will not become involved in administrative functions. He means that the seriousness of the matter requires a political intervention and he is going to insist that those processes be followed.”
Abrahams said Balfour was speaking about the ”long drawn-out processes at great cost to government and the departments”.
Meanwhile, the fate of an Eastern Cape juvenile prisoner who complained that a warder was ”treating me like a woman” is still unclear, a week after he made the revelation to Balfour at an imbizo in Cradock.
This week Balfour told inmates, warders and members of the public attending the Johannesburg imbizo that the boy made the statement twice and then broke down and cried. Balfour immediately asked national Correctional Services Commissioner Linda Mti to have a chat with the boy to probe his allegations.
Abrahams said that reading the boy’s words to mean that he was being sexually abused would be ”totally irresponsible; you have no basis for making such a claim”.
He said it would be ”irresponsible” of him ”to make the contents of the discussion known before the allegations had been tested”. With 241 prisons and the fact that the boy made the allegation only last Thursday, it would be unfair to expect Balfour to have personally done anything about it, said Abrahams.