Mr Speaker, and to you, Mr President, it is with a sense of uneasiness that I rise in your partial defence. There is a much larger issue. Your government, like any other government, can only operate within the Constitution. It can only hold people in prison in terms of the Constitution, and if it does not do so it is constitutionally bound to release them.
The issue of overcrowding is a major, major issue. The big issue behind the debate we are having here is that you may be constitutionally obliged to release more and more people just because your government cannot guarantee them that their detention is in terms of the Constitution and the minimum conditions that the Constitution requires.
A few years back the IFP's former Minister of Correctional Services, Dr Sipho Mzimela, put forward the notion of privatising prisons. What we need are two types of contracts issued by the government. The first one should be to companies to operate prisons which they build at their own cost and the other one to companies to make sure that the company that operates complies with all the rules of the Constitution or the statutes and the rules issued by the Department of Correctional Services.
This notion of government building and operating prisons does not work. It is that condition that forces you, Mr President, of necessity, to release prisoners whether they are ready or not. Unless and until we fix that structural problem, you may again be forced, willingly or unwillingly, to release prisoners whether or not they are ready to be released into society.
We need to look at the bigger issue as our prisons are failing. We dare say that if you want to determine the civility of a nation, you must look at its prisons. We are meeting that test. Can we note and look at the issue of privatising prisons and getting it right? [Time expired.]