JOHANNESBURG — South Africa and Zimbabwe have signed an agreement governing the interstate transfer of prisoners, aimed at easing overcrowding in South African correctional facilities and allowing inmates to serve sentences closer to home.

The memorandum of understanding was signed in Johannesburg on Friday by South Africa’s minister of correctional services, Pieter Groenewald, and Zimbabwe’s justice minister, Ziyambi Ziyambi.

Groenewald said there are currently a dozen South Africans held in Zimbabwe’s prisons, while South Africa holds more than 4,000 Zimbabwean nationals in its correctional facilities.

“In Zimbabwe they only have 12 South Africans who they will send back to us. This memorandum of understanding with Zimbabwe, as far as I’m concerned, is a breakthrough and will make a huge difference especially on overcrowding in our facilities,” Groenewald told journalists.

The signing took place during the South Africa-Zimbabwe Bi-National Commission, witnessed by the presidents of both countries.

South Africa says it costs the state more than R460 a day to incarcerate a single prisoner.

The signing comes as South Africa’s department of justice and constitutional development faces separate scrutiny over what it spends helping foreign nationals communicate during court proceedings. A recent written parliamentary question asked the department how much it had spent on language interpreters for court appearances in the last financial year.

The most recent figures available to the department, for the 2024-25 financial year, showed R76.1 million went towards interpreters and translators. Shona interpreters accounted for 11.5 percent of that spending, or R8.7 million, and were the most frequently used interpreters in five of South Africa’s nine provinces.

“Such bilateral agreements have the potential to ease pressure on correctional facilities, reduce incarceration costs and strengthen rehabilitation by allowing offenders to remain closer to their families and their support networks,” said Kgomotso Ramolobeng, chairperson of the portfolio committee on correctional services.

As of June, the total inmate population across South Africa’s 243 correctional centres stood at 170,518, including 27,906 foreign nationals.