Pieter Groenewald revealed about South Africa’s prisons
A contractor with no bakery collected R1 million a month from the state on a prison bread tender. Groenewald stopped it and replaced the contract with department-run bakeries producing bread at R8.00 a loaf, saving R77 million in a single financial year.
Self-sufficiency across bakeries and farming saved South African taxpayers just over R202 million, inside a department that has had R12 billion cut from its budget over 6 years.
A campaign to make Groenewald president has real backers and a website, but his own party leader says it is a national intelligence project aimed at splitting the Freedom Front Plus. Government has denied the claim.
There is a campaign running in South Africa to make Pieter Groenewald the president, and nobody can agree on where it started. Groenewald says it grew out of a TikTok video posted by a foreign inmate at Goodwood prison. His own party leader, Corné Mulder, told Rapport in June 2026 that it is a national intelligence project aimed at splitting the Freedom Front Plus, and that he was informed of this by contacts in the United States. A government spokesperson said the intelligence services deal with real threats and do not involve themselves in internal party matters.
Both men are in the same party. Only one of them can be right.
The campaign is real. It has a website, named public backers, and has been running since at least January 2026. It is aimed at the 2029 national election. South Africans do not vote for a president directly, so the campaign is in any case more about building pressure than putting a name on a ballot.
“He doesn’t even have a bakery. What he did was subcontract for R15 a loaf. He was pocketing a million rand a month doing nothing.” — Pieter Groenewald
What Groenewald found in the procurement file
Groenewald sat down with Mike Sham on the State of the Nation podcast on 27 July 2026. He said that when he became the minister, one of his first priorities was self-sufficiency, and that meant looking at what the department was paying for food.
What he found was that the state was buying bread on tender at R24.50 a loaf. He said his immediate reaction was that the price was impossible, because R24.50 is a top-shelf supermarket price even without bulk discounts.
He then found out why. The contractor who held the tender did not own a bakery. He was subcontracting the actual baking out at around R15.00 a loaf and keeping the difference. On the volumes a prison system requires, that margin came to roughly R1 million a month for a business that produced nothing.
Groenewald stopped the arrangement. The department built its own bakeries. Offenders now bake the bread, and a loaf costs the state R8.00.
The real savings figure
The Department of Correctional Services is now close to 97% self-sufficient in bread, with 13 bakeries running and a target of 20 by 2028. The savings from the bakery programme alone came to R77 million in the previous financial year.
The department’s farming and vegetable production added a further R125 million. Together, the self-sufficiency programme saved taxpayers just over R202 million in a single year.
That figure needs to be read against a budget that has been cut by almost R12 billion over 6 years. The department did not respond to the cuts by reducing services. It found the money inside its own supply chain.
The rehabilitation angle matters too. Offenders working in the bakeries and on the farms receive certificates and skills. Groenewald said the department is finalising a public private partnership with an agricultural organisation that will use its own networks to find employment for offenders after their release. His stated logic is that a person who leaves prison able to earn is less likely to return.
174,000 people in a system built for 108,000
The savings story sits alongside a capacity crisis. The department has bed space for around 108,000 inmates. Sentenced offenders alone now exceed 108,000. On top of that sit roughly 65,000 awaiting trial detainees who must be kept separate, bringing the total prison population to approximately 174,000.
Groenewald told the podcast that 4 awaiting trial detainees have been waiting more than 10 years for their cases to conclude. He was asked directly whether this is a failure of the criminal justice system, and said there is no doubt that it is.
The department’s own referral data supports that conclusion. It submitted 19,391 applications to court under Section 63A of the Criminal Procedure Act to release low-risk awaiting trial detainees. Only 5,091 succeeded, a success rate of 26.25%. Under Section 49G of the Correctional Services Act it submitted a further 9,667 applications. The success rate was 3%.
The Portfolio Committee on Correctional Services chairperson, Kgomotso Ramolobeng, reflected this in remarks published by Parliament. She called on the Department of Justice and other criminal justice stakeholders to take their relationship with Correctional Services seriously, stating that most of the department’s challenges do not originate from failures within Correctional Services itself.
“A criminal in South Africa has close to a 90% chance of getting away with crime.” — Pieter Groenewald
The foreign national cost
As of 14 July 2026, just over 28,000 foreign nationals are held in South African prisons, split roughly evenly between sentenced offenders and awaiting trial detainees. The official cost confirmed by Parliament’s Portfolio Committee is R482 per detainee per day, which is just over R13,000 a month per person. Across 28,000 foreign nationals, that amounts to more than R13 million a day.
Groenewald has signed a memorandum of understanding with Namibia for the interstate transfer of offenders, and concluded an agreement with Botswana before that. Zimbabwe is his stated next priority, which he described as the big fish. Around 4,500 sentenced Zimbabweans are currently held in South African facilities, followed by approximately 3,500 Mozambicans, 2,300 from Lesotho, and 2,000 Malawians.
He also addressed a widespread misconception. Many people assume large numbers of Nigerian nationals are held in South African prisons. The actual figure is fewer than 300.
High profile inmates and the Madlanga Commission
Mike Sham asked Groenewald what the Madlanga Commission means for his department. Groenewald said the answer is yes and no. Yes, because the commission should push the criminal justice system to process more cases and secure more sentences. And no, because every conviction that follows ends up in a facility that is already 60% over capacity.
He said the Minister of Police put it to him plainly in a recent conversation: “Colleague, I just want to say to you, we are working very hard to increase your overcrowding problem.”
On high profile inmates, Groenewald was unambiguous. He said that as long as he is the minister, high profile individuals will be treated as ordinary inmates with no special arrangements. He raised Schabir Shaik by name, noting that people frequently ask him why Shaik is not back in prison, and the answer is that Shaik has completed his sentence.
On life sentences, Groenewald clarified a point he said is widely misunderstood. Before 1 October 2004, a life sentence effectively meant 25 years. After that date, life means life. A person sentenced to life after that date is only eligible to be considered for parole after serving 25 years, and eligibility is not entitlement. Groenewald said he personally rejects parole applications for lifers even where the risk of reoffending is rated low to moderate.
On the commission’s broader trajectory, he said the arrests are a positive development but he is withholding comment until final verdicts are in.
Two new prisons, and a question about the budget
Groenewald said he has secured funding for two new facilities, at Nigel in Gauteng and Kirkwood in the Eastern Cape, adding around 8,000 bed spaces at a cost of more than R2 billion. Construction will take 3 to 4 years.
He said upgrading existing facilities could yield another 20,000 bed spaces faster and at lower cost than new construction, but there is no budget for it. He is actively lobbying Treasury for those funds.
Two privately run facilities have also returned to state management. The Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein reverted to Correctional Services on 1 July 2026 when its contract expired. Kutama in Limpopo follows when its contract ends in 2027. Parliament’s oversight committee welcomed both transitions.
If he were given an extra R5 billion, Groenewald said his first priority would be electronic monitoring bracelets, which would allow him to increase the use of parole safely by tracking offenders’ locations and sobriety in real time.
