Westville inmates achieve 100% matric pass

Twenty-two-year-old Sandile Stangoni has for the last three years been serving his sentence for robbery at Westville prison in Durban.

He and nine KZN top-achieving inmates were honoured an a ceremony at the Westville facility today.

Stangoni says he came from a well-off family but started doing drugs, "We'll be out in the streets chasing drugs but coming inside here, gave me hope in a second chance. " 

"Now I have my own matric certificate, people will change, here in correctional centres there are programs that they help us with," adds Stangoni. 

Stangoni says he'll be helping the class of 2020 to pass matric - - and plans to study architecture or law when he is released on parole next January.

Prisoners who wrote the 2019 matric exams across KZN's prison schools have achieved a hundred percent pass rate for the first time ever.

Acting KwaZulu-Natal Commissioner for Correctional Services, James Smalberger, says the jump is huge, considering they revived an 88,9 percent pass rate in 2018. He says," We had to sit down and see what measures can be put in place and identify the number of matters that seek our attention."

Smalberger adds, "And just to mention a few, we have made sure that we have good partnership of the Department of Education. And we made a few changes, for example, we had winter camps where we're focusing on specific subjects like maths and science and the physics."