Thank you very much, Chairperson, and thank you, hon members, for your input. I want to start by agreeing with the chairperson of the portfolio committee that a shift towards the objectives of the White Paper will have to be reflected in both our strategy and budget. To this end, the national commissioner is convening a work session next week for two days where management will be reviewing the strategic plan. I think it is important to mention that. Secondly, I welcome the remarks made by the hon member Selfe - or hon Max, actually -about the high cost of the renaming of the centres. What I find interesting, though, is that there has been talk of the high costs of running public-private partnerships for prisons, PPPs, and I have not heard the DA commenting on the high costs of running these PPP centres.
About the renaming process, we have said earlier that all of the work that would have to be done, which is labour intensive such as signage, would actually be done by inmates. Now, this is not a commercial entity that we are talking about. We are talking about correctional facilities, so there is no need for a massive marketing of the renaming process. What is important is that, as you all know, all centres have the same letterhead, so there isn't a need to reprint letterheads in order to reflect the new names of the centres.
I also need to say that we have taken a deliberate decision that we are, in fact, going to rename these centres, not necessarily after human beings - even though the history of this country tells us that names of human beings were actually used to name our centres - but to name centres where our people were locked up. Johannesburg was named after Johannes or Johan. I don't know who Johan is and where he came from. [Laughter.] The same applies to Pretoria. Pretoria Central is named after some Pretorius who I do not know. Pollsmoor, I am told, is "Poll se moor". It was Poll's farm. I don't know what the "moor" is, but it was "Poll se moor", and it is called Pollsmoor today. So, I don't understand this anxiety and frenzy about the renaming.
We want to rename our centres and use names that our people can identify with, with which you and I can identify with. In fact, even we are to name them after political leaders, there would be nothing wrong with that. [Laughter.]
I want to discuss the issue of the amount of money that we spend on human resources. You are right, hon Selfe, but remember that correctional service is a people-intensive function. If you talk about rehabilitation, those rehabilitation programmes have to be rendered by human beings, warm bodies. If you talk about custodial services, those have to be done by warm bodies. Yes, of course, there will be a skewed and unfortunate balance towards the high cost of compensation of employees in our budget, because it is a human resource-intensive function. We cannot run away from that.
Not only that, but these are facilities that must be guarded 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That is why we introduced the seven-day establishment so that we do not continue to have a five-day establishment that is going to require people to be paid overtime when they have to work during weekends. So, yes, we agree that there is a need to have more financial resources to add to this area, so that we can invest in our development programmes. If you look at development and care, there is very little money that is allocated in that area. We need more money, because that is where our rehabilitation programmes are located.
The hon Max raised the matter of the need to have people who have risen through the ranks. I don't know what that means. I certainly don't know what that means. It is too practical. Let me tell you something. Some of the people that we are bringing in are people who have had the experience of sitting in correctional facilities, not as wardens, not as officers, but as prisoners, whom we call inmates today. I believe that they have an enormous wealth of information and experience to know what is good and what is not good for an inmate.
So, when you are talking about rising through the ranks, it means that we are going to be stuck with people who have ... in fact, I was talking to the managers yesterday about one thing that I look forward to and that I want to discuss with Treasury, and that is to be allowed to go back to that system of giving severance packages to some of the people who are exhausted and have no energy anymore to do their work in correctional facilities. [Applause.] This must be done so that we can inject new blood and for me, injecting new blood is not black, white or coloured. It is about bringing in people who still have the energy, who can still run around and will be committed to do the things that we are talking about.
I heard you talking about everything and mentioning colour. That is not my interest. If you look at my team, at the provincial managers, and at who we are bringing in, you will know that, for now, it is not our priority to look at the colour of skin. What we are looking at are the capabilities and skills that people are bringing to Correctional Services. [Applause.] Obviously, rising through the ranks does not mean that you should be kept in charge.
I also want to talk about the issue of custodial sentences. You were right, hon Selfe, by saying that the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster should look into the whole area of sentencing. There is a need, an urgent need, for some of the inmates who are in our correctional facilities to be diverted so that they don't serve custodial sentences. In order for us to be able to do that, Correctional Services would have to strengthen its community corrections system so that the judiciary has confidence that, when it diverts people from serving custodial sentences towards community corrections, at least there will be systems of monitoring. That is why we talk about electronic tagging and halfway houses, because we believe that these are the things that we can do immediately and derive results. These are quick ways for the Department of Correctional Services.
Regarding the comment on public-private partnerships, PPPs, may I remind you that I raised this matter in 2009 during my first Budget Vote as Minister. At that time, I had probably been in office for a month. As I stand here, I certainly, at a personal level, have my reservations about outsourcing custodial services to the private sector. We can find ways of balancing the act and having partnerships, but there is no way you can outsource your security and your custodial services to the private sector.
In any event, we have now inherited that system - a system where two correctional facilities have been run by the private sector for a period of 25 years - and there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can do at this stage. So the reasons for calling, inviting and engaging bidders is to ask them whether we can have another look at the bid specifications which have come out. Do we really want to have the state sitting and watching what happens in private facilities, instead of saying, give us the security and custodial services?
By the way, you also mentioned gangs. Earlier, I mentioned here that we have just appointed a security officer. One of the reasons why we did that is because we want to develop a fully-fledged security structure that will be able to come up with an antigang strategy and collect information from gangs so that we can reduce the number of unnatural deaths in our facilities.
Gang culture has been around for the past century and is a common, worldwide phenomenon. However, what is important is for us to try, as much as possible, to minimise its impact in our centres. Our centres, however, are not run by gangs.
Now, in order for our centres not to be run by gangs, we have got to have sources that are going to provide us with information, and this is the capacity that we are trying to establish. However, not only that, it goes back to the matter which we raised earlier on - the need to vet our correctional officers.
What we have inherited is a situation in which the majority of correctional officers were never vetted. The question is, why? Because one cannot and may not bring a person who has not been vetted into a security environment. As a result, I do believe that today some of the correctional officers - not all - may be criminals themselves, and therefore will be part of the gangs. It is something that we inherited. I don't think it is something that I inherited as Minister from the former Ministers. It is something that we inherited from a system that was rooted in corruption. [Applause.]
On the matter of inmate transfer, yes, you are right, Mr Selfe. The Minister, of course, would have responded by saying that there is no intention. This is because there are currently discussions under way amongst our officials. In fact, Cabinet expects me to present a memo to it soon in which a view on this matter is put forward.
Our perspective, at the level of the Southern African Development Community, SADC, and the US Centres for Disease Control, are that there should be inmate transfer, of course, for some categories of inmates. Obviously, you don't expect that I would agree to transfer Mathe, who comes from Mozambique - if we ever agree to have this inmate transferred - back to Mozambique, unless I am obviously assured that everything will be done to keep him under the conditions within which we are keeping him.
So there is a discussion at SADC level on the protocol on inmate transfer. There is also a discussion amongst ourselves as the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security, JCPS, cluster members. There is obviously a diversity of views on the matter but, ultimately, Correctional Services stands to benefit if we allowed people ... I mean, we have high numbers from Zimbabwe and Mozambique ... if we allowed those people who have committed petty crimes to go back and serve in their countries of origin, it would benefit all of us, but, of course, on condition that there are proper centres or facilities for them to be accommodated in.
There is another matter which has been raised here. We need to clarify this lack of sentence plans for people who are serving a period of 24 months, which is two years. If I may remind colleagues, people who come into our correctional facilities to serve two years - 24 months - may, in terms of the law, serve a sixth of their sentence. That is a couple of months, okay? And the law does not provide for us to have sentence plans prepared for people who are going to stay for very short periods in our correctional facilities. But we are discussing this matter among ourselves as managers in the Department of Correctional Services.
In fact, whilst we are discussing the matter, it is our intention to separate what is called pre-release centres, where people who are sentenced to between 1 and 24 months are accommodated in pre-release dedicated centres where they will serve their sentences. In this way, you are separating them from your hardcore criminals and, therefore, because they are vulnerable, you are saving them from being recruited, for instance, by the gangs.