The Director General of Correctional Services, Linda Mti, has resigned, a government statement said on Thursday. It said the national commissioner quit at the beginning of the month.
“His resignation has been accepted and he will be leaving the public service at the end of November 2006.”
Johannesburg police on Tuesday confirmed that Mti had been arrested for drunken driving.
It was alleged that Mti was arrested last Thursday after being involved in an accident in Sandringham, Johannesburg. A weekend newspaper reported that Mti had allegedly smashed his vehicle into the rear of another car.
Gauteng police spokesperson Director Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said while he could not confirm the commissioner’s arrest he could confirm an accident after which someone was arrested and taken for a blood test.
“He was released on a warning and will appear in court in January. That’s all I can say at this stage. I can’t give you the person’s name because he hasn’t appeared in court yet,” Mariemuthoo said.
Mti had been severely criticised in Parliament for diverting funds, approved to build new prisons, to maintain those that were in a state of disrepair.
Mti was also being investigated by the Public Service Commission to see whether there was a conflict of interest when the contracts for the maintenance were awarded to companies with which Mti was allegedly associated.
Recently, he came under fire for having received a R30 000 performance bonus while his department received qualified audit reports for the past five years.
Mti was last month re-elected vice-president for Africa of the International Corrections and Prisons Association (ICPA). Mti’s re-election was announced at the annual general meeting of the ICPA, held in Canada on October 25.
In October, the Mail & Guardian‘s report card on directors general said that Mti had had another busy year.
“When he, or his officials, were not denying that he was implicated in getting his company to tender for contracts to build jails, or that he had quit to join the local organising committee of the 2010 World Cup, his department’s lawyers were doing their best to ensure that judges’ injunction that prisoners be given antiretrovirals was ignored, and that the media were prevented from touring prisons, despite being invited by the parliamentary portfolio committee,” the report card said,
Mti was named in a Beeld report as the sole director of a company linked to three other firms that benefited from department tenders worth R800-million. Mti’s Lianorah Investment Consultancy shared the physical and postal address of Pehezulu Fencing, Sondolo IT and Bosasa, which had landed the contracts.
“But as busy a year as it was, Mti has little to show for all the attention he has had. In his defence, the department, having reluctantly accepted the wisdom of the Durban High Court, announced that it would test 12 500 inmates and officials to determine the extent of the HIV/Aids and syphilis prevalence in jails.
“Beyond that, the department remains in denialist mode. There is still no acknowledgement of the extent of rape inside prison, which makes testing for HIV/Aids a half-measure when the likelihood of vulnerable inmates acquiring the virus is ever present,” the M&G wrote.
Mti and his political bosses’ defence over the years — that prisons are merely the reflection of their society — was half-baked, the report card concluded. It is incumbent on a system that calls itself correctional to find measures that are just that, it said.