Department of Justice: briefings by Minister and Deputy Minister
SECURITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS SELECT COMMITTEE
12 June 2007
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE: BRIEFINGS BY MINISTER AND DEPUTY MINISTER
Chairperson: Kgoshi L Mokoena (ANC, Limpopo)
Documents Handed Out
Speaking Notes for the Honourable Minister BS Mabandla, MP
Audio Recording
of the Meeting
SUMMARY
The Minister and
Deputy Minister of Justice addressed the Committee. The Minister pointed that
the budget had been increased and that there was strong commitment from the
leadership and staff within the Department to improve access to justice. The
strategic key areas were identified as enhancing organisational efficiency and
transformation of justice, state and society. The challenges facing the Department
were clearly articulated together with the gains that had been made. She
focused on the new digital systems that would enhance security of documents and
systems towards the aim of improving service delivery.
The Deputy Minister explained the realities of prioritising budgetary areas. He
explained that problems were inherited from the apartheid era and there was not
an unlimited budget to deal with all the problems at once. Areas of concern
were prioritised in the budget, such as providing proper courts as opposed to
branch courts over buildings that courts were historically housed in. The
administrative element of court operations was touched in on, with a summary of
administrative practical solutions to office management.
Members asked questions on court facilities, the IT issues, infrastructure, and
the situation with Department of Public Works. Several Members raised
particular difficulties with courts in their provinces. Further questions
addressed the appointment of and disciplinary control over magistrates, the
issues of language, the long distances travelled to access justice in the Northern Cape, and the
qualified audit report. Further questions that would be answered in writing
related to the appointment of a Director of Public Prosecutions in Free State,
the handling of small estates, victim compensation, sentencing procedures,
budgetary allocations to the Legal Aid Board and the National Prosecuting
Authority, harmonisation of salaries, the amounts spent on private security,
cooperation with the Department of Correctional Services, the continuing high
cost of justice which was not meeting the needs of the poor, legal aid, the
need to promote the making of wills, and the Small Claims Court.
MINUTES
Address by the Minister of Justice
Ms Brigitte Mabandla, Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development
(DOJ and CD) outlined the allocation of the budget for the 2007/08 financial
year. The budget had been increased to R8.541 billion. She presented the
project allocations, which were broadly based around emphasising access to
justice. The main areas of activity were explained as responding to challenges
around infrastructure, such as Court Services, which were seen as a core
competency for the Department. Another challenge was improving service
delivery. The Minister explained that building blocks had been put in place to
ensure that organisational efficiency was enhanced. These included the Digital
Management System roll out, the Digital Court Recording project, the roll out
of the E-scheduler solution and the Justice Deposit Account System. She
highlighted completion of the criminal justice review, Bills on the
transformation of the judiciary, the Legal Services Charter and the Khampepe
Commission. She identified the problems caused by the delay in the Superior
Courts Bill. She closed by touching on the gains and the challenges.
The Minister pointed out that infrastructure for the Department of Justice was
a necessity. Currently the Department could not accommodate its entire staff
and it was crucial that a justice precinct be built. The Department was working
closely with the Treasury to set up offices of a long-term nature. Other
functions within the Department of Justice were also affected such as the Justice College. Space was needed for the
College. The shortage of space was linked to the use of mobile courts and
police stations, and key issues also revolved around access for the disabled.
Links were made between infrastructure needs and professional capacity needs in
the Department. It was planned that once the Judicial Institute was set up, it would provide judicial training, as a key strategy to
transform the judiciary.
Budget increases were made for the Legal Aid Board and the National Prosecuting
Authority. The Isondlo Campaign, electronic transfers for maintenance payments,
appointment of the Chief Master, efficiency around small estates, information
technology infrastructure, the digital management system roll out and the
closer working relationships in the Cluster were presented as some of the
successes that had been achieved.
The Minister noted that the context of the direction chosen by the Department
was based on the national objectives. The Department was improving systems,
based on research, to assess the access to justice for all South Africans and
to set up structures that would transform the justice systems. The long-term
aims were to ensure that justice systems and institutions would have the
governance and capacity structures to provide service delivery.
DISCUSSION
The Chairperson ruled that budget questions would not be allowed as this
had already been exhausted at the Department’s budget vote presentation.
Mr F Van Heerden (FF+, Free State)
mentioned the R467 million for facilities at court, and mentioned that there
was a lack of photocopy machines in the court libraries in Bloemfontein.
The Minister said that her Department would follow up the issue in the Bloemfontein library. She
explained that it was simply an administrative issue that was sometimes affected
by human error.
Mr Van Heerden asked about the IT structure. His experience had not been good.
Electronic communications and IT made evidentiary matters a problem. He was
pleased to hear that the State was working on this. He stated that encryption
and decryption were lengthy processes. It was important that E-scheduler had
improved.
The Minister responded on the larger issue of the management of information and
the archiving of documents. A position had been created to ensure that
documents were archived across the country. Space was also being secured to
store documents safely.
Mr Johnny De Lange, Deputy Minister of Justice, said that there were a number
of issues around infrastructure. The whole move to IT was one of the problems
that the Department was having in all the areas of IT. Firstly there were many
courts in this country that did not have infrastructure to be able to receive
computers. For the first time an IT platform was being
installed in each court in the country. The first thing that had to be done was
create an IT platform so that the Department could at least put computers in
there. IT compliance was not even possible in the majority of them but some had
either been completed or would be completed in July. Once that had been
completed the programmes could be put in. The E-scheduler came in at this
stage. This was the management system for criminal cases. Hopefully the system
would be extended to civil cases so both criminal and civil cases were on
record. This also helped an enormous amount for dockets. Dockets were now
scanned into the system so no dockets could be lost. The police had a programme
called the e-docket system, which was allowing them to put dockets on computer.
All the previous problems of the Department were related to the manual systems.
The Department was trying to fix them. Maintenance was a simple example.
Previously because bail and maintenance were recorded on paper this must be
done at the court at which the order was given, and if a person moved, the
staff would literally have to go to the original court to check the details.
The system had been made simpler also by doing electronic payments. Of course
there was some risk with this approach and the Department had to try and deal
with the risk of direct payments by establishing a foolproof system, and
managing the risk of corruption.
Mr M Mzizi (IFP, Gauteng)
emphasised the link between court services and public works. State buildings
were not up to scratch, and he complained of practical and administrative
difficulties in the Department of Public Works (DPW). He asked for the
relationship to be confirmed in view of the Minister’s assertion that there was
a good relationship between the Departments. He noted that there were no asset
registers of state buildings.
Mr L Fielding (DA, Northern Cape) pointed out
that the oldest building in the Northern
Cape was used for all legal activities and asked what
was being done.
Mr Mzizi also asked about court buildings. He was glad that Matutuma had been
mentioned because the Court there was housed in a school. He repeated that the
relationship between courts and DPW was problematic. He said that in another
Committee he was told that there would be 37 new courts. Nothing had been done
about the court in Alberton.
Ms Mabandla said that there was a new dispensation in the Ministry. She was
going to change this and the public works issue would be dealt with. There was
a task group with Treasury, which would reconfigure the facility as a result of
the recommendations from Treasury. There would be a difference by the end of
the year.
Mr De Lange agreed that everyone did want to see decent buildings in their
constituencies. However it had to be remembered that the country had a very
poor legacy. This meant that the Minister had to make regular priority
decisions each year. There was a limited amount of budget and the Department
had to decide whether it would fix an existing courthouse in, for instance,
Springbok, or build a new court in Mamelodi, where there was nothing. Few of
the major black townships had courts. Branch courts did exist and these were
courts that had a physical presence in a white area with people from that court
coming to the branch every day, dealing with cases and leaving again. Staff
living in Soweto would drive every morning to Johannesburg, clock in, and then drive back to work at the
branch court in Soweto.
It was that kind of inefficiency that led to time wasting. Obviously the first
priority at this stage was periodical courts or branch courts, particularly where
they were sustainable, in places like Soweto
and Mamelodi. The Department believed these were sustainable and at the moment
the only services those courts were providing in the black areas were criminal
law. Maintenance or domestic violence issues were handled at the main court in Johannesburg. Civil
services had to be moved to Soweto.
It must be accepted that choices would need to be made and not everything could
be done each year. The Committee would give input, but in reality decisions had
to be made around priorities. The plans were there but obviously a budget had
to support them.
Mr A Moseki (ANC, North West)
approved of the follow ups being done being done on issues raised with the
Minister. He gave the examples of the installation of burglar bars at Courts.
He asked about boundaries and the alignment of justice. He asked whether a
Boundaries Bill for the Department of Justice would not help with the problems
and assist with the co-ordination referred to.
Mr J Le Roux (DA, Eastern Cape)
asked why magistrates seemed to cause so much trouble, citing the recent
disciplinary issues. He asked whether there was a problem with the appointment
procedure.
Mr De Lange explained that the rationalisation of courts was a complex issue.
In many ways the Superior Courts Bill had held up the issue. It was very
difficult to rationalise the lower courts if the Department was not sure what
was happening in the superior courts. Until there was a final decision on the
number of high courts, and where they would be located, it would be nonsensical
to start rationalising the lower courts. A major problem had arisen through the
decision in 1993 to remove the Magistrates from the civil service. The
principle of this was correct, but the decision was taken in a vacuum. The
Magistrates Commission was formed, and the previous regulatory infrastructure
no longer existed to deal with disciplinary issues. A complaint could still be
laid about a Magistrate but the best the Department could do was to phone
through to the Court and ask the Chief Magistrate if he could do something
about it, as the Department itself could do nothing. Judges had no say over
magistrates’ conduct, and even the Chief Magistrates could not tell the
magistrates what to do. Governance was therefore a huge issue. A contentious
issue in the Superior Courts Bill was the Department’s view that the Judiciary
should take responsibility for the magistrates, and the Chief Justice should be
given powers to control and dictate conditions such as what time they must commence
work and so forth. Control meant structure of professional activity. There were
many good magistrates and in places the system worked, but where there were
poor magistrates it did not. It was most embarrassing when judicial officers
were accused of breaking the law, but until accountability was introduced this
would happen. There were problems with the appointing mechanisms. Provincial
Committees made recommendations to the Magistrates Commission who would make
the appointments, but there were not enough checks and balances in the system.
The majority of magistrates were appointed from the
ranks of former prosecutors, who had not had the background nor the training of
presiding officers. The Department was trying to put in place a better system.
The Minister had talked about the Justice
College and the Judicial
Institute plans because of the need to train magistrates. The delay in the
legislation was causing problems.
Mr Moseki asked about the issue of language. He said that it was a problem if
witnesses could not express themselves in their language of choice.
Ms Mabandla agreed that this issue was a serious and complex one. It was an
issue that would be discussed at the Magistrates National Conference, which
would be held in August.
Mr L Fielding asked about Springbok in the Northern Cape. Great distances of up to 70
kilometres had to be travelled to access justice, and often people would pay up
to R80 for a taxi only to discover that maintenance money had been paid into
their accounts, or not paid, or that the cases were not proceeding.
Ms Mabandla explained that special attention was being given to the Northern Cape and
sparsely populated areas, and they featured prominently in the plans for
upgrading of infrastructure and capacity.
Mr Fielding reiterated that public works were a major problem on the ground,
and he considered it impractical that small repairs must be tendered for.
Mr S Shiceka (ANC) asked why an ideal cost was never attached to the backlog
and the ideal staff complement was not fixed. He wondered if the budget would
be sufficient if careful attention were paid to these problems.
He asked about the qualified audit report.
Mr De Lange said the qualified report from the Auditor General engaged with the
problems. The biggest problem was that previously the Department had treated
the trust account differently. When Mr Alan McKenzie took over as financial
officer he convinced the Department that this was not correct and the system
was changed. Initially the Auditor General had given an unqualified report. The
problems relating to the trust account were historic. Since the 1960s the Trust’s books had not
been kept properly, and only in 1994 did the Department start to keep them in
the correct way. The manual systems were problematic. The issues highlighted in
the qualified audit report were dealt with, but the systems could not be
corrected overnight. Even National Treasury was busy with the Department to try
to correlate the systems properly for the trust accounts into which the Department
received money for bail, fines and maintenance. He repeated that the Committee
needed to engage with the Auditor General to discover exactly what had been the
problem and what was being done.
A number of questions still remained, and both the Minister and Deputy Minister
promised to respond to these, and any other further questions that Members
might have later, in writing.
The questions not answered in the Committee because of shortage of time are
listed below.
Mr Van Heerden noted that Bloemfontein
still had no Director of Public Prosecutions and asked when this issue would be
finalised. He emphasised that the Deputy Public Prosecutor was doing a
fantastic job.
Mr Van Heerden asked if the dealing with small estates had really improved.
Mr Van Heerden wanted to know about victim compensation, how the project was
proceeding, and whether it was a success or failure.
Mr Mzizi asked about the sentencing procedure, and noted that although
prosecutors had the right to question sentences given by magistrates but they
were seldom doing so. He cited a recent case in Limpopo.
He gave the example of a recent case in Limpopo
where a very light sentence had been imposed.
Mr Le Roux asked why it took a long time to settle obvious transgressions.
Mr T Manyosi (ANC, Eastern Cape)
asked about the budgetary allocations to the Legal Aid Board and the National
Prosecuting Authority and asked if the allocation address the parity issue of
salaries for their practitioners. He pointed out that the lower salaries had
resulted in many of their lawyers leaving for better conditions elsewhere.
Mr Manyosi asked about the handling of estates, particularly in Grahamstown, Eastern
Cape. The Master of the High Court in Umtata had recently
written to the Minister to complain about the lack of smooth processes.
Mr D A Worth (DA, Free State)
asked about an article in today’s newspaper that stated that the Department had
spent R137 million on private security. This was one of the highest in various
Departments. The Committee had recently questioned the National Commissioner
whether there would be closer cooperation with private security firms and he
reiterated that the differences between the two would remain. Most of the
Departments of Justice in other countries were protected by the police. He
asked about the Minister’s view, and mentioned that from his point of view he
would rather have police on the beat than guarding buildings.
Mr Worth asked if the Magistrates Commission in Pretoria would be getting a new building in
the drive to improve infrastructure. It seemed that there was greater
concentration at the moment on Justice
College.
Mr N Mack (ANC, Western Cape)
asked about rural issues and the poor. He also wanted to hear more about bail
and alternative sentencing. He asked how did the Department
of Justice cooperate with the Department of Correctional Services. He
noted that there were large numbers of people awaiting trial and asked how many
could possibly be dealt with through alternative sentencing.
Mr Mack questioned the high cost of justice and this bias against the poor. The
lack of financial resources would determine whether an appeal would be lodged.
Some people were just pleading guilty because of high costs. He believed that
those with money could drag a case for a long time.
Mr Mack asked about legal aid and the reasons why people thought that it
offered inferior representation, asking if it was true that junior attorneys
would be sent to represent people, and if so, what could be done about this.
Mr Fielding asked why the Legal Board only dealt with criminal cases and not
civil cases. This caused immense problems for women in particular, as if they
did not have adequate resources they would simply not pursue their cases.
Mr Shiceka asked about wills, and noted that it was becoming increasingly
necessary, with the growth in the middle classes, to persuade people of the
necessity of making a will and disposing properly of their assets.
Mr Shiceka asked if the small claims court was helping matters, and if it
required transformation.
Ms Mabandla promised to response to these questions in writing. She noted that
more communication was needed between the Committee and the Ministry.
The meeting was adjourned.
