Speaking Notes for Justice and Correctional Services Minister, Adv. Michael Masutha at the fourth Correctional Youth Summit held in Khayelitsha, Western Cape
Programme Director
National Commissioner: Mr. Zach Modise
Khayelitsha CPO Honourable Thandi Mhambehlala
Our Mayoral Candidate Cllr Xolani Sotashe
Representatives from the Justice, Crime Prevention & Security Cluster
Our Stakeholders and Partners
The community of Khayelitsha
Distinguished guests
Ladies and gentlemen
This month we are commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Soweto Uprisings which changed the course of our struggle for freedom. It propelled convergence in growth of the national mass movement and international solidarity, which led to the total downfall of the apartheid repressive regime. This convergence of mass protests and international solidarity reached unprecedented levels in the 1980’s.
The Soweto Uprising heroes, the Class of 1976, had one idea in mind, the breaking of shackles of oppression and subjugation of the African people in particular and the general population of this country. They had a vision of a society free of apartheid, inequality, poverty, unemployment, debilitating violent crime, and under development.
They paid with their lives the price of affirming people’s inherent human rights and freedom. It is incumbent on the current generations, particularly of young people to learn from the best and take up matters of struggle for social justice in general into their hearts.
They should spare neither effort nor energy to attain a South Africa where people are free from crime, where citizen’s exposure to crime and their actual experience of it, is reduced, because productive lives can only manifest in a safe environment.
As part of advancing social justice, their vision included the elimination of massive spatial development disparities entrenched by colonial and apartheid regimes, which continue to define the per-capital income of households in these geographic spaces.
It is because of this understanding that Khayelitsha was also identified for the first round of the national roadshow, where the Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services holds Correctional Youth Summits.
Khayelitsha is among the top five precincts of the South African Police Services, known to have prevalence of murder and mob injustice in Cape Town. This situation has been worsening over the past three years, with homicides increasing from 50 to 65 murders per 100 000 population, a shocking 30% increase of murder rate.
The Institution for Security Studies says young people between ages 12 and 21 constitute more than two thirds of both victims and perpetrators of crimes in South Africa. Coupled with the fact that 69% of those serving time or awaiting trial in South Africa’s 243 correctional centres, are young people of 35 years and below, we should be really concerned.
This is the group the Statistician General described as carriers of the dangerous combination of poverty, inequality, unemployment, and lack of critical skills for leading productive lives. It is this segment of our society that gets recruited by crime syndicates, gangs and dubious business ventures to perpetrate illegitimate business transactions.
As the current generation of leaders, in all segments of our society, we need to ask: What is it that we should do to reverse these undesirable patterns of development. This requires a multi-pronged approach, which covers the macro socio-economic framework that is part of the apartheid and colonial legacy, while at the same time we need to deal with individual criminogenic factors behind crime.
Correctional Youth Izimbizo are part of this multi-pronged strategy of government to deal with these challenges facing our society.
Ladies and Gentlemen
The ANC led government continues to be seized with addressing spatial development disparities, which continue to stare us in the face. For example, Cape Town has the highest inequality rates, which in terms of the advisory team appointed to drive pro-poor policy development in the Presidency some years back, directly correlates with the most violent crime in South Africa. This cannot be allowed to continue and worsen as I have reflected earlier in my speech.
We strongly believe, to change these misfortunes of our country and particularly Cape Town and the Western Cape, every citizen including the haves and the have-nots must join hands to accelerate the transformation of this province and our country. In terms of the findings of the advisory team, violent crime levels may be a latent result of gross inequality, and this challenge requires all hands on deck to address.
The approach we have adopted, of opening up our correctional centres for skills development of unemployed and poverty stricken young people in communities surrounding our centres, requires the business sector to buy-in to improve both the reach and impact of our interventions.
Over the past three years, Correctional Services has invested over 50 million to recapitalise its agricultural production sites, workshops, learning centres and factories, in order to improve offender access to quality training and exposure to technical skills. These skills include: motor mechanic, electrical engineering, farming, food production, wood works, clothes manufacturing, as well as entrenching the critical work ethic which is a defining culture in any one’s success.
We have witnessed growing outputs including an increase in artisans qualifying in various technical fields. We are on a mission to broaden this access, not only to more offenders, but to young people at risk of committing crime in adjacent communities.
What are we talking about here? We are talking about private industries, agencies and even parastatals, coming forward to:
Invest to increased internal capacity for channelling more offenders, most of whom are either illiterate, under educated and unskilled, to various trades that are seriously in demand in various industries of our society,
Join hands in our programme of recruiting unemployed young people in surrounding communities to benefit from the technical skills training and exposure programme we are running to give young people hope for a better life.
These could include the provision of stipend for the duration of training, accreditation of their training by SETAs, and finding job opportunities for them in various industries. We believe this will contribute in attainment of the critical mass of artisans required to realise a prosperous, non-racial, non-sexist and democratic South Africa envisaged in our constitution adopted 20 years ago.
We seek to close the skills mismatch in our country. We have had a number of pockets of excellence, we need to learn from and spread across our facilities as normative practices. For example in Zonderwater in Gauteng, working with SASSETA, we brought young unemployed people from the Cullinan areas, who went through the programme and gained accredited training in among others carpentry, vehicle body works, electricity, furniture and wood-works, manufacturing of clothes etc.
We need to sustain these initiatives and broaden their reach.
Through Correctional Youth Izimbizo, we do not just want to share these opportunities, but to urge young people to engage and also help bring more innovative solutions to address their plight. What is concerning, is the level of entitlement some young people have.
I wish to reiterate what I said in Toekomsrus in Randfontein on Saturday 18 June, we need to look at the glass as half full, and also take responsibility to redefine our lives. Many young people have defied the odds and succeeded in ensuring that they, together with their families, enjoyed a better quality of life.
There are numerous agencies of the state that provide these platforms and support services for young people, including the NYDA, Small Business Development Department, Labour Department and even Correctional Services.
Some young people do not stand up to access and even demand access to these services inside our correctional centres and in communities in general. I just want to say: Uzakuyithola kanjani uhlel’ekoneni. How could you access these opportunities hiding in a corner. Walala Wasala.
Programme Director
Our mandate as the Department of Correctional Services is to contribute towards a safe and peaceful South Africa free from crime. The White Paper on Corrections in South Africa further mandates us to play a more developmental role in breaking the cycle of crime.
Although poverty cannot be a justification for crime, we must double our efforts to deal decisively with any factor that may directly or indirectly escalate levels of crime. Those hoping to justify their actions through citing the macro socio economic factors I alluded to before, will always face the full might of the law, and I am confident of this assertion, because the criminal justice system’s efficiencies and conviction rates continue to improve.
You do not need to serve time in a correctional centre in order to open your mind to these messages and grab the opportunities provided.
In executing these Correctional Youth Summits, we partner with local municipalities and other players, because, as we acknowledged in the White Paper on Corrections, this mission of correcting the offending behaviour, is a societal responsibility. We have been to UMhlathuze in KwaZulu-Natal, Mangaung in Free State, and Toekomsrus in Gauteng.
Today we are here in Khayelitsha to say that as Correctional Services, we care about the misfortunes of our young people.
Over and above training young people who are either offenders or law abiding citizens from surrounding communities on technical and life skills, we also focus on creating internship and learnership opportunities within the department.
We have increased annual intake from 1032 to 3 000 per year, and currently hundreds of budding ideal correctional officials are receiving basic corrections training in our two colleges, Kroonstad in Free State and Zonderwater in Gauteng.
The National Development Plan (NDP) calls for the creation of a better South Africa through nation building and social cohesion. It calls on everyone to work together to realise a South Africa where all people are and feel safe.
This should not happen in our lifetime because that is a long time time, but should be achieved in 2030. That is a huge challenge. We need to rekindle the spirit of a South Africa full of possibilities to be able to attain these goals.
I believe WE CAN.
I thank you.
