Who they are:
The Grootvlei Maximum Correctional Centre, situated just outside Bloemfontein, forms part of the Department of Correctional Services’ mandate to detain sentenced offenders and remand detainees within a secure, regulated environment while promoting rehabilitation and social reintegration. Operating as a multi‑unit facility within the Grootvlei Management Area, it incorporates various levels of security and offender development programmes, including education, skills training, and structured work initiatives such as agricultural and self‑sufficiency projects. The broader correctional system emphasises safe custody alongside the restoration of human dignity and the fostering of social responsibility.
Services offered:
As a context for engaged scholarship, Grootvlei provides pastoral care students with a critical site of encounter with incarceration, moral accountability, and the complexities of rehabilitation. It enables engagement with themes of justice, restoration, stigma, and reconciliation within constrained institutional environments, while developing competencies in ethical presence, spiritual care, and restorative pastoral practice for individuals navigating confinement and reintegration trajectories. This partnership is particularly significant for the Department of Practical and Missional Theology through TPAS4822 Pastoral Care, where students gain direct exposure to the realities of correctional ministry and restorative justice.
Contact
Blaise Busaka
Youth worker at Martie du Plessis School, pastor and spiritual worker at Grootvlei Maximum Correctional Services (Primary contact)
T: +27 73 333 9170 (Pastor Busaka)
E: ysw@mdup.co.za
Majale Elizabeth Setloboko
(Grootvlei) (Secondary contact)
T: +27 51 505 4733/4 (Grootvlei Office)
Andrew Mokebe
(ACT), Department of Correctional Services, Area Commissioner
T: +27 67 619 3792, +27 51-5054739 (Andrew Mokebe (ACT)
E: andrew.mokhebe@dcs.gov.za
A: Grootvlei Area, Dewetsdorp Road, Bloemfontein, 9301
C: -29.22788820231214, 26.293941728835204
No formal MoU was signed between the UFS and Grootvlei.