Justice Minister Ronald Lamola has revealed that prisons across the country will undergo deep cleaning in a bid to prevent coronavirus infections.
Correctional facilities present an elevated risk of the spread of any contagion because of the high concentration of people in one facility. To make matters worse, South Africa’s prison system is overburdened, and overcrowding is all too common.
Desperate times call for desperate coronavirus measures
President Cyril Ramphosa has ordered the suspension of visits to correctional centres for 30 days in the hope that the virus will not find its way into vulnerable facilities.
Latest coronavirus updates: Global death toll exceeds 10 000
Lamola urged all South Africans to show 100% compliance with the measures government has put in place.
“We want to see maximum compliance across the country regarding regulations and any failure of compliance will be visited upon by the necessary actions by the law enforcement agencies.
“We are busy at the various correction centres with the cleaning, with the hygiene processes that will be necessary for us to comply with the regulations because the regulations says the visit is suspended for 30 days. We do not want to take any chance.”
Suspension of all public visits to: Detention centres and Social Development facilities. #COVID19 #CoronaVirusSA pic.twitter.com/Cg5kTTMyLC
— PresidencyZA (@PresidencyZA) March 19, 2020
Calls to tackle overcrowding in prisons
The Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (Popcru) has called on Lamola to tackle overcrowding, fearing a humanitarian crisis if a correctional facility experiences an outbreak of coronavirus.
“It is simply not enough to stop visits to these centres when there have long before the outbreak been dire challenges that have seen the continuous stabbings and killing of officials without these issues being addressed.
“The situation in our correctional centres has long deteriorated, and new measures need to be considered,” said Popcru spokesperson Richard Mamabolo on 17 March.
Mamabolo urged Lamola to take drastic and urgent action to tackle the coronavirus disaster.
“The coronavirus is an urgent matter that cannot be sorted out using long-term plans and we are saying that the department must ensure that there are measures to ensure that prisoners are relocated to other facilities which might be in a better position to accommodate them.
“Those facilities will obviously not be correctional centres, but there should be facilities that could ensure that in the midst of this virus correctional officials and inmates do not become victims of this disease,” he said.
In the long term, Mamabolo was eager to see Correctional Services build facilities and stands firmly opposed to the privatisation of prisons.
Source: The South African Read More“There have been measures that we have suggested to the department, such as when building new correctional centres, building it within rural areas and they should not privatise them as has been the case,” Mamabolo said.
