By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The Judges conference concluded on Thursday afternoon with the matter of the judiciary’s institutional independence being one of the big talking points for the meeting.
The Heads of Courts convened in Sun City in the North West this week for the Judges Conference.
The Heads of Courts include the top presiding officers from the 10 High Court divisions, the Labour and Labour Appeal Court, Supreme Court of Appeal, Electoral Court, Land Claims Court, Competition Appeal Court, the Constitutional Court and the Magistrate’s Courts.
Chief Justice Zondo reported back to a press conference that the conference had resolved to expedite the matter of the judiciary acquiring it’s own institutional independence.
He said a truly independent judiciary would be able to take full ownership of the court administration processes, control its own budgets, decide on its own where new courts needed to be built and on the adoption of new technologies in the courts.
Zondo said this function was currently a function of the executive as led by President Cyril Ramaphosa and his Justice Minister Ronald Lamola.
He also added that outside of litigation potentially forcing the executive to relinquish control, there was nothing more that the members of the judiciary could do after putting pressure on the executive for 10 years.
“The Judges Conference has resolved that the issue of the institutional independence of the judiciary be expedited. For a period of 10 years, the judiciary has given the executive proposals on the model of court administration and the executive for about 10 years, they did not respond.”
“That has impeded our attempts to get full institutional independence,” said Zondo.
“Conference felt this matter must be given urgent attention”.
He said he would be meeting Ramaphosa next week and said it was important that they met before the end of the year.
Another issue arising out of the Judges Conference was that of the lower courts, where the Judiciary expressed unhappiness that the Department of Justice and not the Office of the Chief Justice, was responsible for the magistrates.
The Judges Conference wants magistrates to be incorporated under the OCJ, which is responsible for providing support to the judiciary and deals with administrative matters.
Watch Live in the video below:
Video Courtesy of JRSA.