Jacaranda FM writes that the Police and Prisons Civil Rights Union (POPCRU) has threatened to down tools at prisons countrywide if the Department of Correctional Services fails to provide concrete answers to its long-standing grievances. The union is demanding progress on several issues, including staff shortages and shift patterns, promotions, and the absorption of former G4S workers into the department.

POPCRU has given the department until Friday to provide answers. The dispute comes as pressure continues to mount on South Africa’s correctional system. The department has acknowledged severe overcrowding, reporting 166,924 inmates against 107,346 available bed spaces at the end of December 2024.

This is equivalent to 56% overcrowding. In May 2026, Correctional Services Minister Pieter Groenewald said overcrowding had risen to 58%.

POPCRU spokesperson Richard Mamabolo said correctional officers are also being placed at risk by inconsistent shift patterns and declining staff numbers. “Our members keep on dying. Our members’ conditions of living keep on declining, and of course, most of them have not been promoted for a long time.”

The union staged a sit-in at the department’s head offices in Pretoria on Wednesday and is now waiting for the department’s response. Mamabolo warned that if those demands are not met, the union could escalate the dispute.

“If it means going out to ensure that all regions, all institutions are affected, that is exactly what we will do,” he said. The G4S dispute is also among the union’s key concerns. The department took over the Mangaung Correctional Centre after the 25-year public-private partnership ended, with the Labour Court ordering the absorption of affected workers. However, the department has raised concerns about the resources needed to employ them.

Mamabolo rejected that argument, saying the government previously spent substantial amounts running the facility under the public-private partnership. “There’s no way they can say that they don’t have resources to fund these workers,” he said. “We would not in any way be relevant to a union that would let workers lose their jobs on the basis that some entity has been changed or ownership of an entity has been changed, and of course, it’s a government mandate from the constitution, which the DCS is supposed to avoid.”

by Faith Modise