The Department of Correctional Services has allocated R1.2 billion for the provision of food for its more than 100,000 prisoners in the 2025/26 financial year, Minister Pieter Groenewald said.

Responding to parliamentary questions from EFF MP Betty Diale, Groenewald said the department spent R1.4 billion on the provision of food on prisoners in 2023/24 financial year.

The amount had increased to R1.5 billion in the last financial year that ended in March 2025.

“For the 2025/26 financial year, the department allocated R1,286,972,000 for the provision of nutrition to inmates,” he said.

In its 2025-2030 strategic plan, the department places the provision of food for prisoners as one of the top four cost drivers of its budget after compensation of employees, property payments, and public-private partnership support.

The document puts the provision for food to the tune of R952,975.

Groenewald also said the department planned to maximise the utilisation of the services of the prisoners to produce food for themselves, to enable the department to redirect funds to other essential programmes.

He said the prisoners will participate in the production workshops in agriculture to maximise their skills utilisation for bread and agricultural production for their ration.

“The self-sufficiency and sustainability programme in the department is centred around offender development, through the provision of work opportunities to offenders in bakeries and agriculture. Expansion of bakeries and agricultural projects towards an increase in offender skills utilisation for food production,” he said.

The department’s strategic plan document states that the department wants to become self-sustainable through activities such as those in production workshops, bakeries, agriculture, skills development, formal education and training, as well as through arts and culture.

“The department will expand marketing of production workshops’ products and services to other client departments to improve revenue generation.”

Meanwhile, Groenewald revealed that the cost per capita per inmate incarcerated for the 2025/26 financial year is R462.13 per day.

 Asked how his department managed financial implications for imprisonment of foreign nationals, he said there were 13,181 sentenced foreign nationals in prisons as at May 4 this year.

“The total cost to accommodate 13,181 sentenced foreign nationals on 4 May 2025 was R6,091,335.53 per day.”

He stated that foreign national prisoners were not a separate category of inmates.

Groenewald added that there were currently no bilateral agreements with neighbouring countries to transfer sentenced foreign national prisoners to serve in their countries of origin.

“The DCS is in consultation with the South African Police Service, Department of Home Affairs, Department of Justice and Constitutional Development, and Department of International Relations and Cooperation to formalise a South African procedure to inter-state transfer of offenders.”

mayibongwe.maqhina@inl.co.za

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