prison privatisation in south africa issues, challenges and ...

Prison, now a historical landmark, were used to construct the breakwater which protects the
Cape Town waterfront.
During the late 1800s, labour demands of the mining industry began to impact on policies for
imprisonment. The development of the South African prison system thus began to parallel that
of another typically South African institution: the mining compound. These compounds were
designed to not only house but also control thousands of workers who were migrant labourers,
separated from their families and homelands.4 The first private prisons in South Africa were
operated by the De Beers Mining Company. De Beers constructed prisons and the state
provided the prisoners to fill them. The mining company paid the expenses to incarcerate their
labourers and also paid the state for the use of their prison labour. By the end of the 19th
century, the De Beers Diamond Mining Company was using over 10,000 prison labourers daily.5
The first racially segregated prison was constructed in Kimberley, and eventually both prisons
and mining compounds were segregated along tribal lines as well.6
Many of the prisoners sent to work in the mines were incarcerated for violating pass laws, which
had been in effect in one form or another for nearly 100 years before the Nationalist government
came to power in 1948. Thus, incarceration of Africans for minor infractions such as pass
offences could reliably supply the necessary labour for the growing economy throughout the
1900s. In this way, the state effectively became, "the provider of unskilled black labour for the
mines through the penal system."7
Local convict labour was integral to the growing South African mining industry until as recently
as 1952. In the later 1950s, prisoners were used for farm work, and dozens of special farm
prisons were constructed for this purpose. In 1959, an act of Parliament officially abolished
prison labour, but replaced the practice with policies that prescribed "useful and healthy outdoor
work" for short term prisoners.
Although the practice persisted in South Africa, internationally the use of forced prison labour
began to fall out of favour during the 1960s. Without the economic incentive to provide prison
labour, many governments began to attempt to reduce prison populations through the
introduction of parole and experimenting with alternatives to incarceration. The current trend,
however, is towards increasing imprisonment and several industrialised nations have seen an
explosion in their prison populations in recent decades.8 Arguably, this is because prisons have
become a profitable industry, and the economic incentive has thus continued to shape criminal
justice policy.
Prisons in the new South Africa
Like the countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, South Africa is still
considered a transforming democracy. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, imprisonment in the
transforming political states exhibited two phases. The prison population decreased at first as
political prisoners from the old regime were released and new government structures were
organised. The next phase saw the prison populations increase as the uncertainties and
difficulties of a new economy, new institutions, and an entirely new government resulted in
increased criminal activity. When a fledgling state is struggling to fill the vacuum left by the
elimination of the previous system, criminal activity will grow in strength in relation to the
weakness of the new government.9
South Africa is not an exception to the phenomena experienced by the transformation of the
formerly communist states in Europe. Crime increased rapidly from 1992 before eventually