Convicts to serenade Macufe revellers

Helping rehabilitate offenders … MEC Mathabo Leeto said offenders must be given second chance

Visitors to the Mangaung African Cultural Festival or Macufe, to use its more popular acronym, will this year be treated to an all-prisoner music show featuring bands from jails from the Free State and elsewhere.

In a first for Macufe, music groups from correctional service centres from the Free State, Northern Cape and Gauteng will serenade festival-goers at the Correctional Services Festival scheduled for October 4 at the Macufe Village.

Performing at the show will be Offender Jazz Band from Kimberley’s Northern Cape Medium Security prison and Offender Jazz Band from Groenpunt Correctional Centre in Vereeniging, Gauteng.

From local jails, Offender Choir Bizzah Makhate from Kroonstad’s Medium C Prison will take part and so will Offender Choir from Grootvlei.

Culture and recreation MEC Mathabo Leeto, said the inclusion of correctional services bands on the Macufe bill was part of her department’s prisons programme that seeks to assist in the rehabilitation of offenders and their integration into society.

“This is an important step in ensuring that we give the necessary support to our prisoners and ensure that they too benefit from government sponsored arts and festival programmes,” she said.
Leeto said in addition to ensuring offenders remain part of the larger society, getting them involved in the arts festival could even turn out to be a new beginning in the entertainment industry for some of them.

“Some of them will soon get out and it’s important that as and when that happens they are not rejected but welcomed in the society and this platform will ensure exactly that,” explained the MEC.
Jails were no longer places of punishment but were centres of rehabilitation meant to ensure offenders can truly have a second chance once they have paid their dues to society, she said.

“Offenders are given new hope and encouragement to adopt a lifestyle that will result in a second chance towards becoming ideal citizens,” said Leeto.

The Correctional Services Festival is jointly organised by Leeto’s department and the correctional services’ department’s Free State and Northern Cape arm.

The Macufe that was launched by the Free State government in 1997 is billed by organisers to be the biggest, most culturally balanced showcase of African arts and culture in the world.