Commissioner Linda Mti's leadership
9 November 2006
The Department of Correctional Services and its Executive Management
Committee (EMC), salutes the out�going National Commissioner Linda Mti, for the
critical role he played in the transformation of the department from the
quagmire of its Apartheid legacy to its current status as a leading player in
offender corrections and rehabilitation in South Africa and the continent as a
whole.
This follows the appointment of Mr Mti to a very critical position as Head
of Security in the Local Organising Committee of the 2010 Soccer World Cup.
Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said the decision of the
Inter�Ministerial Committee on the Criminal Justice Cluster (IMC) and the LOC
to appoint Mr Mti gives due acknowledgement to a cadre that has given nearly 30
years of productive adult life to the cause of liberating, defending and
developing the people of his country.
His contribution to the liberation struggle; establishing parliament's
justice crime prevention and security oversight capacity; in building the
intelligence system of South Africa and in transforming Correctional Services
from a quagmire of the 1990s to an organisation with a clear vision, has left
an indelible mark in South Africa's development history.
Mr Balfour said Mr Mti together with his new EMC that took over the reigns
of the department after his appointment as Commissioner in 2001, pioneered the
transformation of the erstwhile Apartheid prisons into correctional centres
that focussed on offender rehabilitation and social reintegration within a
democratic environment that inculcated a human rights culture.
He is also credited for leading the transformation of prisons in Africa into
rehabilitation�centred correctional facilities, a process which will culminate
in the establishment of an All Africa Corrections Organisation in 2007, a body
that will consist of prisons and correctional services departments across the
continent, for the first time in the African history.
Mr Balfour said Commissioner Mti leaves an unprecedented legacy in
correctional services that cannot be matched and who ever would take over his
reigns has a mammoth task of rising to the challenge.
Speaking on behalf of the EMC, Chief Deputy Commissioner Jennifer Schreiner
said "as Correctional Services we will always cherish his steadfast, visionary,
and caring leadership that shaped our department for effective implementation
of humane detention of people in conflict with the law, in line with Section 35
2(e) of our Constitution."
Ms Schreiner said: "of the many achievements of Mr Mti's tenure at the helm
of the Department, the creation of a machinery for fighting fraud and
corruption, the White Paper that maps out our nation's approach to the
development of a proudly South Africa correctional system, an improved approach
to security management within correctional centres and an interdepartmental
system of addressing overcrowding are those that stand out from the rest."
She said: "we have absolute trust in his strategic leadership which is not
just acknowledged by South Africa, but utilised internationally as he has just
been elected as the Vice-Chair of International Corrections and Prisons
Association (ICPA) in Canada."
The EMC believes the Cabinet's decision was the most befitting recognition
for a man of Commissioner Mti's calibre. His knowledge and experience place him
in good standing to assume such an important responsibility of leading an
integrated national security plan for the world's most spectacular event, the
Soccer World Cup.
Mr Mti was redeployed from the National Intelligence Co-ordinating Committee
(NICOC) in 2001 to help stamp out fraud and corruption and steer the Department
embedded in the prisons culture to a dynamic government agency for correcting
offending behaviour, rehabilitation and social re-integration.
Inquiries:
Manelisi Wolela
Tel: (012) 305 8205
Cell: 083 626 0304
Luphumzo Kebeni
Tel: (021) 464 4600
Cell: 082 453 2244
Issued by: Department of Correctional Services
9 November 2006
