Correctional Services minister expected to explain 'bring back corporal punishment' proposal to portfolio committee

Minister of Correctional Services Pieter Groenewald will have to explain his recent suggestion that corporal punishment should be revisited to alleviate overcrowding in prisons when he appears before the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services on Tuesday morning.

The minister made the remarks when delivering his budget vote in the National Assembly on Tuesday last week.

Groenewald was addressing the challenges faced by correctional services, including overcrowding, dilapidated infrastructure, a rising number of remand detainees, deteriorating facilities, staff shortages, the presence of crime syndicates and gangs within our institutions, and emerging crime patterns.

He said corporal punishment will help ease overcrowding in the country’s prisons. Corporal punishment in South African schools was officially banned in 1996.

“If you look at our criminal justice system, and specifically justice, we must start a debate to say, shouldn’t we bring back corporal punishment?” Groenewald said.

“A young person who steals 10 loaves of bread will sit in prison for perhaps three years waiting for sentencing. Go think (whether we should) bring it back... to address this issue,” Groenewald said in Afrikaans.

During the briefing by the Peace and Security Cluster Committee Chairpersons on Monday, the Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services, Kgomotso Anthea Ramolobeng, said that they will be expecting Groenewald to explain the rationale behind his remarks.

She explained that there were largely legal milestones which led to the abolition of corporal punishment and that the decision to abolish it stemmed from a violation of human rights.

“What is my view? I believe that it is in the best interest of whoever is in the executive or whoever is in government to abide by the Constitution of the country. Why has the minister taken a step to say, we should perhaps open debates on corporal punishment? We have yet to be taken into (his) confidence, as the portfolio committee. 

“I can assure you that tomorrow we do have a Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services meeting from 9.30am, and we will probe the minister on why he made those assertions, and what informs them? So that he takes us through that,” Ramolobeng said. 

“There are other measures that we can try to deal with, or come up with alternatively, that must deal with overcrowding, outside of corporal punishment, especially of those who have less (serious) crimes that leads to them having bail of R300."

Ramolobeng added that what could come out of the discussion on corporal punishment is perhaps one focused on community services for those who have committed petty crimes.

“Put more focus on rehabilitative outlined programmes that talk to the current challenges we are facing.”

theolin.tembo@inl.co.za