According to figures from last year, most of the country's 236 prisons were overcrowded, with about 60 prisoners squeezed into a cell designed for 18 people. Mr Sitole's statements came in the same week as a call by the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, for urgent attention to be paid to the issue of prison reform. The Archbishop made his call on Sunday during a pilgrimage to Robben Island, the infamous island prison for political prisoners off Cape Town during the apartheid era. He and President Nelson Mandela had been incarcerated there. I believe the time has thus come for us, as a nation, to address prison reform with the seriousness it deserves.
Prison reform is long overdue.
Other non-governmental organisations and human rights groups have reacted with outrage to the proposal to use old underground mine shafts as prisons.