A number of the 363 prison officials arrested after protest strikes were evicted from their homes this week.
It is believed that about 40 staffers at Modderbee prison in Benoni were ordered to vacate their residences.
The members of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) were dismissed between July last year and January after protesting against working conditions. A key grievance has been staff reductions over weekends, while other complaints include the “remilitarisation” of correctional services, disparities between private and public prisons, and overcrowding.
The Department of Correctional Services branded the strikes illegal.
This week, Popcru vowed to intensify its protests with marches in Gauteng and Bloemfontein. The union has threatened a countrywide strike if its demands are not met.
The union says the prisons need at least 9 000 more warders to guard the growing prison population. It says one warder currently guards more than 200 prisoners, while the standard ratio is one warder for 30 maximum security prisoners.
Judicial Inspectorate of Prisons statistics show there are 73 000 more prisoners than capacity allows. Only 33 of South Africa’s 240 prisons are at or under capacity, while more than half are more than 150% full.
Popcru said staff shortages were aggravated by personnel cuts over weekends, when there were many jailbreaks.
Last week it approached the public protector to probe the Minister of Correctional Services Ngconde Balfour’s “abuse of power” in dismissing strikers.
In its letter, it said: “The minister [in July last year] publicly announced his intention to dismiss employees ‘even if the dismissals are unprocedural … his lawyers would clean up his mess’.”
Correctional services described the letter as “a cheap political campaign”. “The minister is not involved in administrative issues. Managers in the department are dealing with the issue in the framework of the law,” said Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Manelisi Wolela.
Wolela said Popcru had accepted the weekend staffing regime last September. He said the department was spending R850-million a year on overtime.