Chairperson, I want to use this opportunity to greet all my former colleagues from the Department of Correctional Services, and also to greet the Inspecting Judge of Prisons, Justice Van Zyl, as well as Justice Desai.
For the past ten years I have had the opportunity, as the Chief Inspector of Prisons, to visit most prisons in South Africa. I would always be amazed, upon coming to Parliament, to hear what the Minister had to say. I say this with the utmost respect. We heard what the new Minister said in Parliament today. It is far removed from reality. We are living a little pipe dream.
I want to urge you to pay serious and urgent attention to the realities of prisons, in prison and at prison level. I think we can go on forever making as if some of those realities do not exist, but they do, Minister and Deputy Minister.
I want to start by saying to the Minister that, sadly, it seems as if she has inherited a department which is in crisis. I think one must first acknowledge that. The Department of Correctional Services - and everyone has said this - has received qualified audits for the better part of the last century and this century. [Laughter.]
Corruption is systemic throughout the department. Sexual violence and assault in our correctional centres are rife. Staff morale is at an all- time low and the management team lives in denial. That management team probably wrote your speech. [Laughter.]
Whenever this department appears before the Select Committee on Public Accounts or the Auditor-General, its management team comes up with all the excuses in the book. Every year we are told about these turnaround strategies that they are going to start implementing to improve things.
However, Minister, it is already written in the history books of this country that the Department of Correctional Services has, since the democratisation of South Africa, continued to slip deeper and deeper into the darkness of corruption and mismanagement. The Jali Commission reports attest to that.
Minister, I ask you how you can expect this Parliament to approve a budget that spends R36 million per day on inmates in South Africa, while so many hungry children, uncared-for sick people and millions of unemployed get no assistance from us. Minister, you have really not convinced us that these large amounts of money should be allocated to this department, considering its poor track record and lack of financial controls.
There is a saying that if you throw more money at a problem, all you get is a better-resourced problem; you don't remove the problem. [Laughter.] Of course, hon members in this House who are intellectually deficient won't be able to cope with me! Let me continue. This is exactly what Correctional Services has become: a better-resourced problem. The increase from R3,5 billion in 1997-98 to more than R13 billion this year is a significant increase. [Interjections.] Unfortunately, again, some of those in the peanut gallery don't understand some of this stuff. It is very difficult to deal with them.
Correctional Services has failed to address the problem ... [Interjections.]