Modderbee Correctional Service hosts annual offenders’ arts festival
The Modderbee Correctional Service hosted the annual offenders' arts festival from June 11 to 13. Participants were offenders from all correctional services in Gauteng.
The Modderbee Correctional Service hosted the annual offenders’ arts festival from June 11 to 13.
Participants included offenders from all correctional services in Gauteng.
The main aim of the offenders’ arts festival is to encourage offenders to participate in performance and fine arts.
The art festival provides an opportunity for offenders to express themselves using all forms of art and to redefine themselves, while showing the public that offenders are human beings who can grow and change.
Drawings, sculptures, paintings and recycled material produced by offenders were exhibited during the event.
The Gauteng regional commissioner, Grace Molatedi, says: “My view of this event is to try to encourage offenders to contribute toward the commemoration of Youth Month.
“Most importantly, I would like to tell the offenders that their role is also very important in preventing other young people from ending up in correctional centres.”
“I think young people out there don’t understand the impact of crime and if they hear it from the offenders, they will understand it better.
“These are some of the programmes that shows different communities that the department wants to ensure that South Africa is safe.”
A female offender from the Johannesburg Correctional Service, Sharon Mdluli, says: “The first things that I’ve learnt as an offender are patience, to tolerate people and not to think within the box.
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“Prison has taught me different languages, how to communicate with different people and to love myself.
“I now know how to respect myself. I am proud of who I am and I will never go back to where I was.
“My message to the youth is that crime doesn’t pay. They should avoid peer pressure, know who they are and should learn to manage and control their anger as anger can lead to crime.”
A Modderbee male offender, Mlungisi Cindi, says: “Prison has helped me to find myself. Before prison I didn’t know who I was and I was lost.
“Being in prison has opened my mind and I have discovered a lot.
“I have grown from the person I was, who was a drug addict and busy with crime, into a positive person.”
Cindi says he failed Grade 12, but managed to rewrite his matric in prison and is currently busy with his N6 in marketing management.
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