Inmates at Gqeberha’s St Albans prison have been left without water for two weeks, crammed into overcrowded cells under the watch of just one official for every 30 prisoners.
Members of the parliamentary committee on correctional services warned on Thursday that the 1:30 ratio was a ticking time bomb for violence and chaos at the maximum facility and placed the lives of officials at risk.
The MPs were left stunned during an oversight visit when they discovered the inmates had been eating untested food and that the prison’s health compliance certificate had expired four years ago.
The oversight visit at St Albans formed part of the committee’s inspection of prisons in SA, with the Eastern Cape being the third province to be visited.
Other correctional centres visited were Mthatha, Mqanduli and East London earlier this week.
The first stop at St Albans was the kitchen in the medium B and maximum security sections where officials told the parliamentarians about shortages of equipment, with some stoves and ovens not working for more than two years.
A trip to the production workshop where inmates are involved in textile, welding and the bakery as part of their rehabilitation programmes, revealed the glaring effects of the overcrowding with only a few able to participate due to limited work space and equipment as well as a staff shortage.
The workshop’s R2m maintenance budget for the 2025/2026 financial year has already been depleted, while crucial machinery is out of service.
Correctional services national commissioner Makgothi Thobakgale said the broken machinery in the prison’s workshop meant they could not achieve their targets set for this financial year.
“Other problems arise from the fact that we can’t repair the broken machines and this limits our hopes to expand the facility.
“We have fewer than 20 offenders working in the steel workshop here.
“Two months ago, I visited Kenya and they had 10 steel workshops in one correctional facility, with more than 500 offenders working.
“What this means is that half the number of inmates we have could be involved in actual work but as things stand, the majority of inmates are in the cells while a handful are working.
“The overcrowding makes it difficult for the government rehabilitation programmes to be effective when many don’t get to participate.
“So I can say, roughly 60% of inmates get to participate in the programmes while 40% are left out in SA prisons,” Thobakgale said.
A group of inmates in one of the maximum security blocks said they were struggling with intermittent water outages which had left them high and dry for two weeks.
“Last month, we didn’t have water for two weeks,” an inmate said.
“It returned for two days and went back off again.
“This makes prison life more difficult as one also has to worry about hygiene, especially when you live with 30 other people in one cell.
“We have to use basins to wash with a few cups of water, and the toilets situation is even worse.”
Portfolio committee chair MP Kgomotso Ramolobeng said the St Albans centre was the most overcrowded facility they had visited since their visits started in 2024.
“The most worrying factor in this facility is the ratio of officials to inmates.
“This poses danger to both the inmates and officials and the department needs to mitigate this.
“The overcrowding is a general issue in all prisons, but at centres in KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape where we have already been their ratios are not high. In KZN it’s 1:22, which is also abnormal by the way.”
Ramolobeng said the health compliance certificate issue was also identified in the other centres visited in the province and they would ensure it was rectified.
“Kitchens in the Eastern Cape centres are problematic.
“While we didn’t see issues of hygiene here like we did in other facilities, the issue of old health compliance certificates and eight out 10 broken pots in one of the kitchens is concerning.
“If those two remaining pots were to be broken, inmates would not have food.”
Committee member MP Marlon Daniels said the situation at the St Albans centre was the same in other prisons in other provinces.
“What saddens me most here is the violation of basic human rights by depriving people of water.
“We don’t want a situation where there’s an uprising of inmates against this deprivation because that would lead to violence and ultimately deaths.
“They opened the taps to show me how they haven’t had water running for two weeks.
“Another issue is that the inmates are eating food which has not been tested as required from officials.
“When we asked them about this, we found that what they actually did was to taste the food.
“Food testing involves checking whether certain types of foods are cooked perfectly and with a certain temperature to qualify as properly cooked, such as chicken because you can’t eat it medium-rare as you might catch illnesses.”
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