Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald has disclosed that 12 037 foreign nationals are currently awaiting trial in prisons across the country for the contravention of the Immigration Act.
The number of foreign prisoners waiting for trial constituted just 19% of the remand population in the country’s prisons.
Groenewald revealed this when asked during a question and answer session in the National Assembly this week whether he intended to initiate bilateral engagements with the South African Development Community (SADC) countries to deport offenders who were foreign nationals to alleviate correctional facilities from the overcrowding.
“Currently there are no bilateral agreements with neighboring countries due to the fact that South Africa does not have an enabling domestic legislation to regulate and facilitate the transfer of sentenced foreign offenders, including South Africans incarcerated in foreign countries, to serve their sentences in their countries of the region,” he said.
This takes place as the country’s prisons are bursting at the seams with sentenced prisoners totaling 104 000 inmates in facilities that cater for 108 000 beds.
“There are enough beds for the sentenced inmates in our facilities. Our problem comes with the remand detainees, not only the foreign remand detainees, but all remand detainees, and then we talk about almost 61 000 remand detainees,” Groenewald said.
He observed that there were people who have been in remand for more than 10 years and they still have not had their criminal cases finalised.
“We are looking at the matter, and of course, the solution will be that we also have remand detainees who couldn’t afford a bail of around about R100. There is about 1 227 who couldn’t afford a bail of less than R1000.”
Groenewald stated that the implementation of the Immigration Act in relation to deportation of those not entitled to stay in the country fell within the scope of the Department of Home Affairs.
“The Department of Correctional Services is responsible for identifying foreign nationals in its detention facilities and reporting such individuals to the Department of Home Affairs. The Department of Home Affairs then establishes the nationality of such offenders and initiates the deportation of those who stay in the Republic of South Africa.”
Asked if he has engaged fellow ministers in the security cluster to find a way of dealing with legislation and other things to minimize this issue of overcrowding, Groenewald said there was quite a lot of progress.
“We already started last year. There is a process to amend the Criminal Procedure Act, and part of that will also be to amend the legislation in such a way that we have legislation that will make it possible to deport of these illegals back to their countries of origin,” he said.
But, Groenewald indicated that there was a willingness from Lesotho to see where they could exchange and deport South African’s prisoners in their country with their nationals to their home country.
“In Namibia, same situation occurs there. So the good news is that we are in a process, and I would like to see that we take all steps possible to enhance it.”
He stressed that South Africa must have enabling legislation to do so.
“At this stage, we lack that legislation, and that’s why I said we’re in the process to see how we can make legislation.”
Meanwhile, Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said the deportation of illegal foreign nationals continued with the available funding and the deportees with financial means engaged in self-deportation.
Schreiber said subject to the ongoing budget process, the intended budget allocation for 2025-26 was R23.2 million, up from R21.3m allocated the previous year.
“The number of deportations annually has increased from 14 589 in 2020 and 39,672 in 2023 to 46,898 in the previous financial year. This is an 18% increase year on year and it does means South Africa now does deportation than countries like France and Germany combined,” he said.
