(Budget vote debate in Parliament: Office of the Chief Justice)
The FF Plus welcomes the complaint that the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution lodged with Parliament about the conduct of certain Members of Parliament who serve on the Judicial Service Commission as their conduct could be seen as undermining the Bench's independence.
The FF Plus demands that the complaint must be thoroughly investigated.
Although the Office of the Chief Justice was instituted mainly to support the Chief Justice and the administration of the high courts, the seventeenth amendment to the Constitution appointed the Chief Justice as head of the Bench, which is responsible for establishing and monitoring the norms and standards for the execution of all the judicial functions of all courts.
The planned transfer of even more functions from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development to the Office of the Chief Justice must be put on hold until the Office is adequately equipped to fulfil those functions.
The backlogs in South Africa's high courts constitute a gross violation of the rights of victims of serious crime and disputes pose a material threat to the legal system.
The Covid-19 crisis shone the spotlight on how ineffective current court processes are as well as on the urgent need to modernise and digitise the courts.
Proposed budget cuts to the compensation of court employees means that critical positions will not be filled, this will in turn exacerbate the backlogs and as a result, support to the Office of the Chief Justice may be jeopardised.
The clean audit by the Auditor-General (AG) and the accompanying remarks about the high standard of management at the Office of the Chief Justice are welcomed. The remark about human resources possibly being a problematic area is alarming.
The full-blown specialist court envisaged by the Land Court Bill (for land claims), with its judge-president and additional judges to rule on land-claim cases, will end in disaster if there are not sufficient resources to support the court.
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