South Africa
Minister vows tougher crackdown as anti-corruption measures intensify─── ZENANDE MPAME 10:14 Sat, 11 Apr 2026
The department of correctional services will intensify its zero-tolerance approach to corruption, with more frequent unannounced searches and stricter monitoring of officials at all levels.
This approach is aimed at restoring public trust and reinforcing a culture of accountability within correctional facilities. In the past three financial years, the department has dismissed 44 officials for corruption-related offences.
A total of seven of these officials were dismissed in the 2023/24 financial year, while 37 lost their jobs in the 2025/26 financial year. No official was dismissed for corruption in the 2024/25 financial year.
Gauteng leads with the highest number of dismissed officials, at eleven, followed by the Western Cape with nine and KwaZulu-Natal with six.
The North West recorded six, the Free State and Northern Cape eleven, the Eastern Cape one, and Limpopo and Mpumalanga also six.
“When I became the minister for correctional services, I said one of my priorities is to ensure there is proper consequence management,” said correctional services minister Dr Pieter Groenewald.
“Part of the problem in South Africa is impunity. People must understand if they did something wrong, and if they committed a crime, they must pay the price. So we will continue with consequence management.”
I am worried about the lower ranks, specifically when it comes to wardens. We have situations where four wardens have to attend to more than 600 inmates in a certain section in some of our prisons. “That’s not acceptable.”
Alongside disciplinary measures, the department is also facing a significant staffing crisis. Groenewald said large-scale recruitment efforts are underway to address shortages that continue to impact safety and service delivery.
Through the correctional services learnership programme, the department aims to recruit and train 12,500 entry-level correctional officers by 2030.
“And of course, because of the unemployment situation in South Africa, we started, and we received 1.2-million applications, and we went through the whole process.
“And we hope by the end of this financial year we can already say that we have trained 2,500 recruits in correctional services.”
The learnership programme is the primary source of new correctional officials. Upon successful completion, students are swiftly absorbed into funded security and rehabilitation roles to reduce the vacancy rate.
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