Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour has tabled in Parliament the full executive summary of the final Jali Commission of Inquiry into fraud and corruption in prisons.
However, the names of allegedly corrupt officials are omitted.
In a statement on Tuesday, Balfour said this was because most of them had not yet had the opportunity to defend themselves or to reply to allegations against them.
Last week, the National Assembly’s correctional services committee protested when they were presented with only a 61-page summary of the report.
Committee chairperson Dennis Bloem said then this limited their oversight role.
He said without the full report the committee would be unable to keep track of implementation of the commission’s recommendations.
The full 3 500 page report lists a series of fraudulent activities and corruption cases, in many instances ”with impunity”.
The Presidency set up the Jali Commission in 2001 as part of an overall strategy to fight corruption in the public service and strengthen other interventions to ”turn around” the correctional services department.
Hundreds of officials and offenders gave evidence, and 11 interim reports were released.
This resulted in hundreds of disciplinary and/or criminal cases of fraud and corruption being investigated, with over 43 officials being dismissed so far.
Balfour said a 20-member special task team had been established to drive disciplinary cases emanating from the recommendations — and 109 officials had been served with notices of intended disciplinary investigations and cases.
Last week, when the first 61 pages of the executive summary were released, Balfour said over 60% of the recommendations had already been put into effect.
These were:
- partly outsourcing the staff recruitment process;
- signing memoranda of understanding with the South Africa Police Services and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) and the Public Service Association;
- adopting an anti-corruption strategy;
- establishing independent correctional supervision parole boards and a parole review board for hearing appeals; and
- instituting a comprehensive health care system that included primary health care and an HIV/Aids comprehensive management programme.
Outstanding issues included developing an anti-gang and rape strategy, accelerating interventions aimed at reducing overcrowding, improving offender disciplinary processes to ensure humane and corrective discipline, and expediting the process of addressing parole and sentence conversion backlogs, he said. – Sapa