File photo by Oupa Nkosi
Reducing or eliminating contraband flowing into South African prisons depends on correctional services employees “doing the right thing”, national commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale said on Tuesday.
“The biggest contributors to contraband [in our prisons] are our [staff] members,” Thobakgale told parliament’s portfolio committee on correctional services.
The seemingly free flow of illicit items into the country’s 243 prisons — housing about 155 000 inmates — has been deemed a national crisis.
In December last year, Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald said that in the prior 12 months, confiscated contraband included more than 41 000 cellphones, almost 1 000 kilogrammes of drugs, R200 000 cash and 11 000 weapons.
Those numbers — slightly tweaked — were presented to the committee on Tuesday.
According to the presentation, for the reporting period January 2024 to January 2025, the Eastern Cape recorded the highest number of confiscated cellphones, with 10 639, followed by Gauteng (8 793) and KwaZulu-Natal (7 117).
“Sharpened objects”, including knives, were most prolific in Western Cape prisons (3 875), the Eastern Cape (2 561) and Gauteng (2 073).
In the Western Cape, 548 866 grams of drugs were confiscated, 313 066.62g in KwaZulu-Natal, and 270 192g in the Eastern Cape.
Thobakgale said that once contraband made its way into facilities, the ability to apprehend those responsible for the smuggling increased significantly, as did the difficulty of prosecution due to lack of “direct evidence”.
According to the department’s presentation, “a concerning issue is the failure to criminally charge officials caught smuggling, especially when small quantities are found in their possession”.
“Despite the law prohibiting any amount of illegal items within correctional facilities, due to the quantities found, some cases are not enrolled as they will not be able to stand for court, however, DCS [department of correctional services] continues to curb the smuggling and maintain institutional integrity.”
Surveillance had been strengthened, checkpoint inspections had been improved, and heads of correctional centres were being held “accountable”, the department said.
But committee members were unanimous that there appeared to have been limited movement in dealing with recurring problems, and that the approach taken by the department was reactive instead of proactive.
According to the department, in the past year, 16 officials were dismissed for smuggling contraband, 37 were being investigated, but only 11 had been criminally charged for corruption and handed over to the police.
Besides being under-staffed (38 000 employees for the entire prison population) and under-resourced, correctional centre perimeters are also porous, with Democratic Alliance committee member Kabelo Kgobisa-Ngcaba saying that at one Western Cape prison, the perimeter fencing was cut so that contraband could be smuggled in.
According to a parliamentary question raised by Kgobisa-Ngcaba, 120 prisons need perimeter fencing.
Committee members agreed that the number of “narcotics dogs” — the unit had been revived — should be increased in facilities, as should the number of body scanners, of which there were only 14 in the prison network countrywide.
Gang and general criminal coordination took place from inside prisons, officials said, which was why the scramble to secure communication devices had become so lucrative.
“We even have gang members in [correctional services] uniforms,” said Thobakgale. Police were conducting “high level investigations” into such, he added.
Asked about the possibility of blocking cellphone signals in correctional centres, Thobakgale said that according to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, it was illegal for the department to do so because these were not crime combatting facilities.
In the year in question, only 145 prisoners had been caught with contraband, according to the department. They were “charged internally” and privileges, such as shopping, had been temporarily removed.
Some were reclassified and moved to other prisons. All cases were handed to the police.
In the same reporting period, only 44 members of the public were suspended from visiting prisons because they were found with contraband during visiting hours.
Eleven contractors had also been found with contraband, according to the department.
All cases were handed to the police.