By Themba Godi
The story of Thabo Bester sounds so improbable, it is stuff for a fiction thriller.
Except that this is no fiction, it is real and hauntingly painful to the victims that he duped, robbed, raped and killed.
For his heinous crimes Bester had been sentenced to life and 75 years behind bars and rightly so, sent to Mangaung maximum prison to guarantee that he serves his sentence fully.
Almost a year after Correctional Services informed the country that Thabo died in a cell inferno, we now know that the felon is out of the maximum prison and the decomposing corpse found in his cell belongs to someone else.
This sad saga raises questions, not just about corruption within the prison system and the alleged involvement of some political leaders, but about what Mangaung prison represents.
Mangaung prison, together with Kutama Sinthumule (Limpopo), are privately run prisons on a 25-year contract with the state to build and run the prisons on behalf of the state.
Their contracts were signed off on 11 August 2000 (Kutama, with capacity of 3 024) and 1 July 2001 (Mangaung, with capacity of 2 928).
They were supposed to be the models of how prisons must be run, the future of corrections in the country.
They were, in true neocolonial style, modelled from the British. Mangaung prison was to be run by a British outfit called G4S (a very visible player in the South African private security scene).
These contracts were signed at a time when so-called Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) were in vogue, the private sector exalted as the epitome of virtue, and the public sector as inefficient, corrupt, wasteful and old-school.
This wasn't just a South African phenomenon, internationally capitalist fundamentalism was rampant after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
However, it didn't take long for the illusions of an efficient, effective and economic privately run custodial system to be busted. The experiment has been a failure, even the apostles of privatisation cannot vouch for it. The Thabo Bester saga epitomises a failed, corrupt and expensive system that has not yielded the results that privateers had vouched for. Mangaung and Kutama are far from being models for future corrections system.
It is a truism that the prison system in our country is corrupt, inefficient and a shame. Even the Department of Correctional Services manages itself like the criminals in their custody. Look at the financial statements in their Annual Reports to Parliament to fully appreciate the rot.
However, from a policy perspective it can never be justified to give custodial responsibilities of offenders to private companies. Private companies are in it for profit, their contracts are such that they must milk the state. They always choose profit at the expense of murder and rape victims. Mangaung and Kutama are very corrupt prisons in the country. Crimes are committed by prison guards and those in high positions, prisoners are tortured, blackmailed and even killed.
Mangaung has been the notorious one. About a decade ago, the Department of Correctional Services had to take command of the prison when it became clear that its private management had lost control of the prison after lengthy periods of riots, stabbings, hostage taking and strikes. There were allegations of the use of antipsychotic drugs and electroshocks to control prisoners.
The costs associated with these two prisons is insane. Only those serving minority and foreign interests can justify this. The portfolio committee on correctional services observed in 2013 that by the end of the contracts, 2025 and 2026, the projected expenditure would be more than R20 billion. When juxtaposed against the expenditure on Kimberly Prison then, this amount could have built 18 new prisons. It is an amount that could be used to modernise facilities, train and better equip warders or pay them decent wages, to decentivise corruption.
Thus the Thabo Bester case, dramatic and brazen as it is should not be seen in isolation. It must be seen in the context of a wrong policy choice by the ANC-led government of then President Thabo Mbeki. These two prisons have been more expensive to run than the other state run ones. The touted virtues of efficiency and economy were no more than ideological conviction or the usual capitalist propaganda.
At one point the then Minister of Correctional Services Sbu Ndebele admitted that the model doesn't work well. Even senior departmental officials admitted that the contracts were not well thought through, and that outsourcing custodial responsibilities was wrong.
Both the Portfolio Committee and Scopa voiced their unhappiness with this arrangement, from a policy and financial point of view.
I vividly remember that the issue was referred to cabinet during then President Jacob Zuma's administration, where it was resolved that when the two contracts expire they will not be renewed, and that no other privately run prisons must be built.
As the contracts are nearing their expiry, one sincerely hopes that government will not renew them, even though there is a privatisation frenzy currently affecting State-Owned Entities we never dreamt could be privatised like Eskom, SAA, Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa, Transnet and Denel.
President Cyril Ramaphosa is an ideologue of private enterprise, we cannot bank on him respecting that decade old cabinet decision.
Mangaung and Kutama experiment is a painful lesson on the folly of privatising state duties. We must build a capable state, as envisioned in the National Development Plan.
Themba Godi is the former chairperson of the standing committee on public accounts (Scopa) and current president of the African People’s Convention.