Chairperson, the mission of the Department of Correctional Services is to contribute to maintaining a just, peaceful and safe society through enforcing decisions and sentences of the court in the manner prescribed in legislation, detaining all inmates in safe custody while ensuring their human dignity, and promoting the rehabilitation, social responsibility and human development of all offenders. In doing this, the department is able to contribute to the President's call of ensuring that all people in South Africa feel safe. The name "Correctional Services" means a place where behaviour is changed from law-breaking to law-abiding. It is in this spirit that the department is faced with this enormous task of changing the offending behaviour of those who have fallen foul of the law to that of law-abiding, but at the same time ensuring that society is protected.
The White Paper on Corrections indicates that public safety is the key dimension of the purpose of the correctional system. It is also illustrated in the Freedom Charter, adopted at the Congress of the People at Kliptown on 26 June 1955, and adopted by the ANC in 1956, that there shall be peace and friendship. I am talking about the real Congress of the People of the ANC. [Interjections.]
Hon Chairperson, let me direct my focus to two important areas of corrections, which are the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. As I have mentioned earlier, the purpose of corrections is to change the behaviour of offenders, who will ultimately be returned to society after a certain period of time.
The rehabilitation of offenders is an important task of the Department of Correctional Services, but I must mention that the department cannot do this alone. It needs the involvement of nongovernmental organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations and the community in general. The White Paper on Corrections reminds us that "corrections are a societal responsibility". It is a societal responsibility because offenders will be returned to the community after serving a period of time ...
... njengokuba ubab' uNdlovu kade esho ... [... as Mr Ndlovu was saying ...]
... in correctional facilities.
All efforts must be made to ensure that, while in correctional facilities, offenders are provided with opportunities for changing their lives around. This can be done if programmes provided to offenders are tailor-made to address their unique challenges and problems. It is therefore important for the department to ensure that correctional sentence plans are reliable and effective, and play a role in directing offenders towards programmes that will address their unique challenges.
The ANC will continue to encourage the formation of, and to work within, progressive civil society, organisations of communities, students, youth, women, people with disability, traditional leaders, business and other nongovernmental and community-based organisations. It will also continue to reach out to religious institutions to ensure common approaches to challenges of transformation. The ANC will conduct such mass work, taking into account the dynamic changes taking place in the social structure and varied lifestyles of the South African society.
The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services has recently questioned whether the implementation of correctional service plans were for the sake of compliance or whether they play a pivotal role in the rehabilitation of offenders. This he questioned mainly, because of the large number of those with sentence plans, only a small fraction are involved in programmes in our correctional facilities. I would therefore like to make a call to the department to make sure that there is an alignment between the number of offenders with correctional sentence plans and those involved in correction programmes. These two should speak to each other.
I would like to make a humble plea to the Department of Correctional Services that the continued skewed budget of the department should be something of the past in the near future. We would like to see the budget aligned to the rehabilitation of offenders. We have observed in the budget that development and social reintegration are the two programmes with the lowest allocations, and both of them combined make up only 7% of the allocation of this budget. Social reintegration has been allocated R577 million for the 2011-12 financial year, which is 3,5% of the total budget of the Department of Correctional Services. Preparing offenders for reintegration does not start when the offender is about to be released. In fact, it starts when the offender is admitted to a correctional facility. As I mentioned in my Budget Vote speech last year, in 2010, parole and the social reintegration of offenders remain an integral part of the correctional system, not only in South Africa but all over the world.
A number of challenges confront offenders when they are released into society, starting from acceptance by the community, being labelled and stigmatised, to a lack of employment opportunities for ex-offenders. It is therefore important for us to call for a progressive alignment of the budget to address some of these challenges.
Ninety-two percent of the budget under social reintegration goes to compensation of employees. However, this is meant to increase the monitoring of probationers and parolees. Not enough attention is paid to community-based programmes for these parolees. We would like to call upon the department to increase the involvement of NGOs and civil society organisations in rendering service and programmes for ex-offenders in the community.
As far as health care is concerned, the correctional system should not just restrain convicted persons, but should contribute to the goal of rehabilitation. In this regard, the RDP vision sought to promote transformation of the correctional system as part of the state machinery. This includes both human and physical resources within this department, particularly in terms of mindsets, attitudes, ethos, contribution and loyalty to the developmental state.
The RDP articulated that correctional staff had to be trained to reflect democratic values and to transform the then military command structure of the prison service. The RDP further argued for inmates on ARV treatment, which suggests an increased allocation to the care programme. This would promote access to the health care rights enshrined in the Constitution, as the budget allocated for 2011-12 is currently 11,2%. The key question is whether the allocated amount for care is adequate enough for the inmates living with HIV and Aids.
Hon Chair, let me take this opportunity to welcome efforts by the department in their strategic plan to increase the number of parole cases in which victims of crime make representations during the parole board hearing. In my speech last year I indicated that victims of crime should not be regarded as just state witnesses or a source of information. I emphasised that more needed to be done to ensure that victims' rights to make representation during parole hearing were exercised. It is on this basis that I say to the department: The road is still long, but we will get there.
In the minute I have left, I want to say happy birthday to our President. Thank you, Chair! [Applause.]