Hon Chair and hon members, I must start by thanking all who participated in this debate and express a word of gratitude to the participants for preparing for the debate. It was clear to me that the hon members had read the annual report and identified the issues requiring attention. I want to thank them for that. [Applause.] When you engage in a debate, it is rare to find that people address issues emanating from an annual report.
I think I should respond to hon Manzini, who said there was no political will to rehabilitate, and then made a reference to animals vis--vis the inmates we look after, who happen to be fathers, sons, daughters and mothers in our society. That language was very unfortunate. It is language that was used during the days when we referred to correctional facilities as prisons, as you referred to them; when we used to talk about punishment rather than rehabilitation; and when we used to condemn people to a life of death in a correctional facility, rather than rehabilitating them for the purpose of reintegrating them into the communities they came from.
Correctional Services is not a dumping ground. It is a department that runs facilities meant to correct the behaviour patterns of people who come from our own families and our own communities. Correctional Services can also never be held responsible for the crimes committed by people - even people who come from our centres.
Unfortunately, when people are released from these centres, we ourselves in our communities stigmatise them. We do not allow them to access jobs. We do not embrace them. We refer to them as criminals - until a person dies or even takes the decision to go back to a life of crime. I think that it is proper that as hon members we should be the ones who first and foremost drive the campaign to change the language used by our communities. The language that you used here, hon members, is language that was used before 1994.
Now we have a White Paper, which was adopted by this Parliament. That White Paper deals with some of the programmes that we are implementing, and these programmes are meant to interpret the spirit and the letter of the White Paper.
So, I do not understand it when you say there is no political will. My sense is that you did not listen to all the things I reported here this afternoon and the programmes I outlined. In fact, what I did this afternoon was a midterm review of the programmes that we have initiated and implemented to make sure that rehabilitation indeed takes place.
I agree with all hon members that there can never be effective rehabilitation in conditions of overcrowding. What it means is if we continue to have high levels of overcrowding, we will not create an atmosphere that is conducive to effective rehabilitation. So, we are trying to do everything we can to reduce the high rate of overcrowding.
I also want to say, hon Manzini, that it is incorrect to suggest that the special remission, which was announced by the President and is currently being implemented, was meant to reduce the high levels of overcrowding. Special remission is a provision that is in the Constitution. When we drew up the Constitution we ourselves decided that it should be there to allow the President to exercise his prerogative. My view is that if people are unhappy about or in opposition to the granting of amnesty or pardons - even though this is not a pardon - or remission, they should actually embark on an exercise to pilot an amendment to the Constitution here so that we do away with this provision. Now that we are implementing this provision, it has become a problem! Yet all of us drafted the Constitution - we consulted broadly and South African communities and civil society agreed that we should have this provision in our Constitution. I therefore do not understand what the issue is, unless we are suggesting that we should have a provision that the President must never use. That would be unfortunate.
I also think you simply missed the point of the debate. You missed the point because, if I had been you, I would have addressed matters contained in the annual report in the same way as other members - including opposition members from the ID and others, by the way - which showed that people were prepared for the debate. Not only that, but they also addressed matters that I had raised at this podium. I think there should have been an effort from your side to do that. [Interjections.]
I fully agree on the matter of the Victims' Charter, which was raised by the hon Matila. However, I think that one of the responsibilities and obligations we have as public representatives is that of going out and conducting public awareness programmes in our communities to teach people about the importance of the restorative justice process, in the first instance, and of victim empowerment. After all, as Correctional Services, we could trace victims of crime and "sensitise" them before we have parole board hearings.
Sometimes victims of crime are not convinced that there is a need to appear before a parole board to express their views on how they feel about the process. A number of rape victims would rather walk away from that process and try to forget what happened. When it is time for them to appear before the parole board as part of the process of victim empowerment, people might decide that they do not want to know. They might not want to meet or see the perpetrator. They say that they were traumatised enough 10 or 15 years before and they do not want to go back to that. Therefore it is important for us to be the ones who go out to talk to victims of crime and persuade them to come forward. They and we should have a view on these matters.
Lastly, on the cancellation of public-private partnership prisons, PPPs, I welcome the hon Bloem's comments on the matter. I think our intention was completely misunderstood in some circles, where people believed that we decided to cancel the PPPs purely out of mischief. I don't think people are aware of the amount of money that we have poured into the two private correctional facilities that we have. It was much more money than was budgeted for in our expenditure for a correctional facility, even for facilities housing bigger numbers than the private correctional facilities. Financially, it was a good decision.
Secondly, if truth be told, the PPPs are not necessarily in line with government priorities. Let us look at the four PPP projects that we are going to build now, with a bed space of 3 000 each. We are going to build massive centres. We have identified the male maximums to be the beneficiaries of this build, yet there is a steady rise in the numbers of women who are incarcerated in our facilities for aggressive crimes. So, we are not addressing the specific needs and requirements of our women.
Also, the majority of the people in our correctional facilities are juveniles. So, we are not addressing the specific needs of those juveniles. After all, it is important for them to go through a tuition programme while in a correctional facility. The design of our current facilities does not allow for that. In South Africa you need institutions where you can place these young people in a college-type arrangement, where there is compulsory education - not as a form of punishment but to equip them and give them the necessary tools for the future.
I agree with the hon members who mentioned alternative sentences and diversion to community correction. I am sure you are aware that one of the things in the restructuring process I announced yesterday, and in the speech today, is that we have established Community Corrections as a branch. To be honest, in the past and all along, Community Corrections has been the stepchild of the Department of Correctional Services. However, if you do not instil confidence in our judges and magistrates, if you do not earn their respect and if they are not convinced that our Community Corrections system is efficient, well run and does the proper monitoring of parolees and probationers, you will certainly have a situation where people will be locked up for stealing chicken, bread or milk for babies.
If you have an effective system that is properly organised, well structured and efficiently run, judges and magistrates will have the confidence to divert people to Community Corrections. Then alternative sentences will be passed and imposed on offenders. I fully agree with the idea that we need to take this route in South Africa. I believe that things might improve with the current structure of the branch that we have established and that we will have fewer people serving custodial sentences in correctional facilities.
I also welcome the fact that the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services should receive reports on a regular basis from the office of the Inspecting Judge, as somebody mentioned. Our responsibility is to task the national commissioner and his management with investigating all allegations contained in the report of the Inspecting Judge. I want to appeal to the select committee that if or when they have identified specific cases, which are in the report of the Inspecting Judge, the national commissioner and his team should appear before the select committee to report on how those allegations have been handled and what has been done about the culprits. [Applause.]
Debate concluded.