'Facebook rapist' Thabo Bester is seen on a television screen in the Western Cape High Court on 2 May 2012. Picture: Gallo Images / The Times / Shelley Christians
Despite the department of correctional services (DCS) taking control of the Mangaung Correctional Centre in the Free State, this is not the first time: it did so in 2013, after the private security contractor “lost effective control of the facility”.
Multiple media reports indicate that the prison is known for its spate of stabbings and a “worrying deterioration of safety and security”.
The Mail & Guardian noted that the DCS served G4S with 29 financial penalties for violence which erupted in the prison since 14 September, 2013, totalling a reported R 1.44 million.
In February, 2020, the DCS was forced by a court order to release documents related to a 10-month investigation of Mangaung prison under the control of private security companies.
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“As expected, the report details a number of disturbing incidents involving officials, healthcare workers and their treatment of people incarcerated at Mangaung,” Centre for Applied Legal Studies’ attorney Sithuthukile Mkhize noted in a report on incidents in the G4Srun prison, published by Wits University.
Mkhize said the disturbing incidents included “a person… dying while being held in a cell which is said to have had no lighting or ventilation, recording his death as a suicide”.
“Officials also segregated incarcerated people without proper approval and taser guns were being purchased without any officials having been trained to use these weapons.”
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