Lamola describes Cape Town’s child killings as ‘an endemic situation’

An endemic situation.

That is how Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola, described crimes committed against children in the Western Cape.

“Why is this thing happening every day? We have commissioned a team to help us research and grapple with this to make us understand why [the numbers are] so high,” he said at a media briefing on Wednesday.

“We are also going to look at working more closely with universities so that we are also given scientific help in understanding this situation.”

Lamola had convened an urgent two-day meeting with high-ranking officials in his department as well as the province’s correctional service parole boards to address what it called systemic flaws in the parole system.

Lamola’s interventions come after the grisly murders of two Cape Town children in separate incidents, allegedly carried out by men who were on parole.

This after two parolees were arrested for the alleged murders of two Cape Town children in recent weeks.

Tazne van Wyk, 8, was found dead in a stormwater drain outside Worcester after she had gone missing in February.

Her alleged killer, Moyhdian Pangarker who had pointed out where her body had been dumped, has a criminal record dating to the 1980s.

He had allegedly absconded from parole a year ago.

Reagan Gertse, 8, was found dead on a riverbank in Tulbagh on Sunday after going missing on the same day.

Convicted rapist and parolee Jakobus Petoors, 58, was arrested on charges of abduction, rape and murder. His parole was revoked after his arrest.

“The loss of one life is one too many, but two is a tragedy we may never find the lexicon to describe,” Lamola said.

“Our nation and communities cannot afford another tragedy. If the cases of Tazne or Regan do not give us a perspective about reforming the parole system, nothing else will.

“While we may argue that our parole system is flawed, but not broken, we should not be satisfied with a system that is not predictable.

“In our decision-making process, we need to be able to have the level of particularity that enables us to predict with certainty whether the individuals who have come across our system are equipped to re-engage with society.”

Desired results

Deputy Justice Minister Nkosi Patekile Holomisa said the system was getting the desired results in that every year, about 75 000 inmates were released on parole, with 99% of them complying with their conditions.

“Our centres are overflowing. They are overcrowded. We don’t have enough space, enough money to provide them with additional accommodation,” he added.

A parolee was released after it was believed his or her conduct had been corrected, Holomisa said.

Overcrowding, however, was not a condition for release, the chairperson of the National Council of Correctional Services, Judge Siraj Desai, said.

“You don’t get parole because the prison is full,” he added. “It is obviously a very, very serious problem, but there are other, safer and legally sustainable methods used [to deal with this].”

The national commissioner of correctional services, Arthur Fraser, said correctional services was in the process of developing a master plan to ensure the “modernisation” of its infrastructure to deal with the monitoring of parolees.

Lamola said, while there was a “problem” in terms of infrastructure, the provision of it would “never be able to outpace the rate of conviction in this country”.

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