The Kokstad Medium Correctional Centre under Kokstad Management Area, on 24 January 2024, hosted a prayer day for officials. Religious leaders from various denominations have been incited to feed their spiritual being with the word of God.
As we resume our journey for this year, 2023. We really need divine intervention. We can’t travel alone without the presence of God. – Said PRO Mr Bongi Mbotshwa
To be a Correctional Official is not an easy job sometimes you become a parent to someone who’s older than your parents, you learn to become versatile possessing various skills like being a pastor to those who seek divine intervention, you become a psychologist to those who need psychological assistance, you become a teacher to those who need assistance in education. At the end of the day, we go home to our families whereby we have to act as parents to our kids and spouses to our partners.
Various prayer items were mentioned in this prayer, like crossing over from 2022-2023, substance abuse, protection of officials and their families, and unity amongst officials.
As a department we really appreciate this gesture ,we can’t work alone in silos , we need their intervention in rehabilitation programmes, to attest on that our White Paper on Corrections in South Africa categorically states that rehabilitation of offenders is a societal responsibility
Xolani Mdlozini, spiritual worker from Kokstad Medium Correctional Centre, said they need to include offenders in these prayers because he believes they also need to be part of these sessions.
“We are going to have joint prayer for officials and offenders next time because offenders also need programmes of this nature to revive their spiritual being”.
