South African prison authorities faced major embarrassment on Monday after one of the most wanted criminals broke out of the country's maximum security jail and 15 remand prisoners escaped from cells elsewhere.
A vast manhunt was under way for Ananias Mathe after he pulled off a Houdini-style escape by smothering himself in grease, slipping off his shackles and then sliding through a tiny window in his cell in Pretoria's C-Max prison.
Mathe, a former Mozambican soldier with extensive military training, is the first person who has ever managed to escape from C-Max. He had been awaiting trial on 51 charges including murder, rape, and robbery.
Reports said Mathe broke out early on Sunday by breaking off two steel bars from his bed which he wedged on either side of a window measuring just 20 centimetres by 60 centimetres (eight inches by two feet) to help him slide his shoulders out of the window.
He made a hook from another bar prised from the bed, tied his clothes and bed linen to it and then slid out the cell and down the firewall.
The 28-year-old left a final message, writing "Fuck you" on the side of the prison wall with grime he had collected on his way down.
Mathe is described by police as a "scrawny little guy" who managed to evade police for months, and has used his military experience to evade capture. When finally caught last month, it took two large officers 15 minutes to subdue him.
Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour said he was furious and believed that the escape may have been carried out with the help of prison staff.
"I don't think any offender can escape as easily as that. Definitely there must be some collusion that took place," he told public radio.
"I want a spot check on everyone who was there ... even polygraphy tests so we can get the truth of the whole thing. I want a strong team of police after Mathe because he is dangerous," Balfour said.
The minister's spokesman Manelisi Wolela said there was no doubt that prison officials had been negligent. "The (correctional services) department has already instituted investigations ... by a high level committee, he told AFP, adding that the findings would probably lead to disciplinary action.
While authorities were still reeling from the surprise escape, news emerged that 15 prisoners awaiting trial for armed robbery, car hijacking, rape and burglary had escaped from holding cells in the province of Mpumalanga, close to the border with Mozambique.
"They sawed through the bars of the windows. It seems as if they used hacksaws," local police Superintendent Mtsholi Bhembe told AFP.
National police spokesman Ronnie Naidoo said that inmates frequently tried to smuggle in objects to use in escape attempts.
"Some of these prisoners are very ingenious. They (police) do a full body search but can never be 100 percent sure nothing is being smuggled in," he said.
Balfour said many staff members at prisons had been maimed and killed because prisoners had brought in dangerous weapons.
At the beginning of the month, six dangerous prisoners awaiting trial escaped from an Eastern Cape prison after breaking the pane of a small window and cutting the frame with a hacksaw.
According to the police website, 1,908 prisoners escaped from police custody in 20052006, of whom 568 were re-arrested. Opposition parties claim the prison service is simply not equipped to deal with the vast number of detainees in one of the world's most crime-ridden countries.
Launching a new report on the criminal justice system, the main opposition Democratic Alliance said on Monday that the prison regime "simply cannot cope with the number of people awaiting trial".