GroundUp reports that the president of the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru), Zizamele Cebekhulu Makhaza, says the government should take back the running of prisons from private companies.

Last week, representatives of the union visited the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein, from which convicted rapist and murderer Thabo Bester escaped in May 2022. At a press conference on Wednesday, Makhaza said Bester’s escape had been well planned and had taken place while some of the Popcru members were off-duty. He asserted that the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) had failed, as had the Parliamentary Committee on Justice and Correctional Services, which should have done its oversight work better. “They have been visiting this prison as a committee, they should have picked something up. These private prisons are of no help to South Africa. They must be fully under the Department of Correctional Services. This Bester saga is an embarrassment to all of us linked to prisons,” Makhaza said. He claimed that G4S, which runs the Mangaung prison, was “not taking responsibility” and was “still trying to hide a lot regarding the Bester escape.” Makhaza opined that prisons should function as they had under the apartheid regime and not “function like hotels”. “We hated the regime but we can take lessons from what worked. We would rather have public prisons that we have control of, than private prisons where we have no say on how things are run,” said Makhaza.

Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Chris Gilili at GroundUp

Read too, Popcru says calls for Lamola to resign over Bester saga ‘shift the blame’, at TimesLive

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page