poor court performances continue to plague justice system
14 May 2007

The DA is to request a special debate in parliament about the poor performance of the courts, spokesperson Sheila Camerer said last Wednesday.

"Effective and efficient courts are essential in the fight against crime," she said in a statement.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) head Vusi Pikoli's report in this regard to the National Assembly's justice committee last week was not reassuring. Continuing below par performance by the courts across the board, as described by Pikoli, gave naught for the comfort of crime victims and civil litigants.

"Pikoli described negative trends in just over 2000 court rooms," she said. Finalisation rates for cases had dropped in all courts, with 38 percent of all cases in the high courts having been on the roll for more than a year.

Outstanding court rolls and backlogs had grown so that the lower courts currently carried 209,572 cases with an official backlog (cases over a year old) of 36,322.

On average, appeals could take five years to finalise, while finalising cases by plea bargaining was also decreasing. Camerer said perhaps the most worrying aspect of the poor performance was that many cases making it to court fell by the wayside.

Of the cases brought before the courts between April 2006 and January this year, 970,280 were new cases, 248,479 were withdrawn, 236,022 obtained a conviction, and 276,477 were finalised.

"This is according to the department of justice's information released to the portfolio committee in March 2007."

According to the NPA's assessment of the overall performance of all courts released in March 2007, in the period April 2006 to January 2007, 875,038 cases were enrolled, of which 587,037 were removed from the roll (including cases withdrawn, transferred, struck from the roll and warrants issued).

"Pikoli himself acknowledged that this was a matter for concern." Since 2002, both convictions and finalisation of cases had dropped steadily. The conviction rates of cases finalised ranged on average from 65 percent for sexual offences cases, to 90 percent for the high court.

This related only to cases that made it as far as finalisation.

"Accordingly, conviction rates for serious and violent crime remains at a low eight to ten percent of all cases reported to the SA Police Service."

Contributory factors for this dismal performance included the large number of vacant posts in prosecution (about 24 percent), the large number of vacancies among magistrates, particularly in the regional courts where some 60 posts were vacant, and the slow rate of recruitment to fill these vacancies, Camerer said.