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The Drakenstein Correctional Services, outside Paarl, has an 8 551,5 kg chicken-meat shortage, with not enough to feed Western Cape prisoners, after its chickens died of heat stress on 28 February, a day temperatures in Paarl reached more than 42ºC.
According to a reliable source 5 701 chickens died when an area-coordination manager stationed at Drakenstein prison ordered the water supply to certain areas of the prison be turned off after a leak was detected.
This decision also resulted in the water supply to the chicken farm being turned off, killing thousands of chickens and causing a more than R300 000 loss.
“It only took three hours for those chickens to die,” the source said, occurring as it did between 10:00 and 16:00 on 28 February.
The chickens were scheduled to be slaughtered on 11 March.
According to the source the area-coordination manager is Ntomboxolo Kungune, head of Drakenstein Correctional Service’s “right hand man” who, along with Kungune, allegedly mismanages the prison through abuse of power, malfeasance and fruitless and wasteful expenditure.
Paarl Post reported on Kungune’s alleged mismanagement in January 2024 after a letter of complaint was sent anonymously to Ronald Lamola, Minister of Correctional Services, by prison wardens.
ALSO READ: Allegations levelled at Ntomboxolo Kungune head of Drakenstein prison
It provided information to back-up these accusations.
To date the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) had not yet commented on the letter.
In this letter the wardens highlighted how Kungune took “competent officials out of their positions if they did not toe her line or agree with her, replacing them with junior officials . . . who do not question or challenge her.”
The source claimed that the prison manager who instructed the water to be turned off “has no clue what is happening with the chickens [chicken farm]” and that they “did not even listen to the people who tried to advise them”.
They said the area manager was one of Kungune’s new appointments who, along with the rest of her appointments, seemed “inexperienced” in their role and, as a result, had a direct impact on the death of the chickens.
“Arrogance resulted in the area manager turning the water off, because the consequences of not doing so were related to them if they did not,” the source said.
“Prisons will now have to buy chicken, which will be more expensive, or they will have to eat pork and red meat,” the source said.
But, they said, eating pork was “actually out of the question” due to the pigs’ obesity, posing a health risk to humans, something Paarl Post had previously reported on.
“Management is supposed to request an investigation, but very few of these investigations materialise, and only certain people are investigated because the people who [are appointed to] do it are pro-Kungune.”
However, according to Candice van Reenen, a DCS spokesperson, the department was aware of the incident, adding that an investigation was underway.
“On the morning of 29 February an abnormally high number of chicken mortalities were observed by officials when they arrived at the broiler houses,” she said.
“After assessment the facility had reported a loss of 5 700 30-day old chickens from the facility’s agricultural section.
“Initial findings indicate the high mortalities were a direct result of the high temperatures experienced, fuelled by an unplanned water outage.”
Paarl Post’s trusted source’s dates and the DCS’s dates of the water outage differ by one day, even though the anonymous source insisted the incident occurred on 28 February and not the 29th as per the DCS’s version.
