Cape Town - The Thabo Bester escape scandal has led to questions being asked in Parliament about the need for lifestyle audits of officials in government.
Members of the National Assembly’s Justice and Correctional Services Portfolio Committee this week demanded answers on whether G4S was conducting lifestyle audits on its employees.
But they were left stunned that the multinational security company was not doing this.
Senohe Matsoara, who worked for GS4 at Mangaung Correctional Centre, had flaunted his lavish lifestyle on social media months before Bester made his daring jailbreak in May 2022.
Matsoara had, among other things, purchased a VW T-Roc, valued at over R600 000.
DA MP Glynnis Breytenbach, her colleague Werner Horn and ANC MP Anthea Ramolobeng are among the parliamentarians who asked how a warder with a salary of less R20 000 a month could afford such expensive luxury vehicles.
MPs wanted to know, given that some prisoners had money, whether there was a real risk that they could buy favours from officials and bribe them.
Joseph Monyate, who is the head of the Mangaung prison, shocked MPs with his response that they do not do lifestyle audits on staff.
“We don’t do any lifestyle audits on our employees. We don’t see any reason to do lifestyle audits on our employees,” said Monyate.
Steve Swart of the ACDP also asked if they had done lifestyle audits on Matsoara.
National Commissioner for Correctional Services, Makgothi Thobakgale said the issue of lifestyle audits was now being addressed by the department.
He said they were also preparing to take over Mangaung prison after the Bester fiasco and part of the plan was to conduct lifestyle audits.
“The human resources processes to take over include lifestyle audits. We have already indicated that with Mangaung with the takeover. At the moment that is one of the things we will do.
“We have already identified that there is a different grading system as the minister has indicated. We have identified that there is a need for re-skilling or retraining, especially correctional officials because the training the Mangaung officials go through in terms of intensity and time, is less than the training we take our own correctional officials through.
“Those are the details that the task teams are tasked to work on,” said Thobakgale.
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