The Sunday Mail
The delivery of justice is essential in creating a prosperous society. Failure to deliver justice can lead to public despondency, riots and even civil wars.
It is partly because of these issues that the world over, governments set aside significant budgets for the delivery of justice.
In Zimbabwe, although the system has not collapsed as has been seen in other countries, it has endured its fair share of challenges. These include delays in delivering justice, corruption and staff shortages.
Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku, when opening the 2015 legal year, highlighted some of the issues that are affecting the sector as well as the improvements recorded.
Laxity among judges was his main concern, as he noted that only a few individuals — particularly at the High Court — were working hard to ensure timely delivery of justice.
He said only five Harare High Court judges performed well in 2014, while some among their 25 colleagues were so lazy that they wrote only two judgments in a year in which others delivered as many as 72.
He also spoke of the need to improve the conditions of service to curb corruption.
The Sunday Mail Extra reviews how the country’s courts performed in 2014 with a view to drawing lessons for the future.
Constitutional Court
The Chief Justice said after the 2013 elections he hoped applications in this court would decrease since many of them were election-related.
However, of the 79 constitutional applications made in 2014 only one case was election-related. What this means is that the court which was once dominated with election cases is now handling more non-election cases.
“During my address at the official opening of the 2014 legal year, I indicated that the Constitutional Court had received a total of 81 cases for the year 2013, of which 58 were election-related,” said the Chief Justice.
“It was my hope then that after the elections of July 2013 the number of constitutional cases filed with the court during 2014 would decrease. I spoke too soon. In 2014 a total of 79 constitutional applications were filed with the court. Only one of these was related to a by-election in Chitungwiza. It is, therefore, apparent that the number of Constitutional applications filed in this court is on the rise.”
The judges seemed to cope with the workload as they completed 52 constitutional cases and reserved judgment in several matters, compared to 25 judgments in 2013.
The rise in applications means the burden carried by the nine Constitutional Court judges increases as they also double as Supreme Court justices.
Experts say there is urgent need for Constitutional and Supreme courts to have separate judges.
Supreme Court
As the population grows, so do crime rates. This is indicated by the number of cases before the Supreme Court.
Figures show that 407 appeals were filed at the Supreme Court in 2014, almost double the 289 of 2013.
The Supreme Court appears to be on top of the situation as it finalised 333 appeals. Chief Justice Chidyausiku, however, lamented the number of ex tempore judgments in this Court.
In legal terms ex tempore means at a time. Research shows that a judge who hands down a decision in a case soon or straight after hearing it is delivering a decision ex tempore.
Another way a judge may deliver a decision is to reserve his decision and deliver it later in written form.
An ex tempore judgment, being off the cuff, does not entail the same preparation as a reserved decision.
Consequently, it will not be thought out to the same degree.
Experts say this can lead to the quality of judgments being compromised.
“I am concerned over this development because the Supreme Court is the final Court of Appeal on all issues relating to the interpretation of the law, other than the constitution,” said Chief Justice Chidyausiku. “The importance of the Supreme Court judgments providing precedents cannot be over-emphasised hence the need for written judgments.”
He said due to the upsurge of Constitutional applications, now more than before both the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court have found it necessary to determine cases but defer the handing down reasons for the judgments to later dates.
The Chief Justice said this was being done in an effort to speed up justice.
This again highlights the need to have more judicial officers at the courts to ensure smooth operations.
Bulawayo High Court
According to the Chief Justice, the court worked hard to scale down its backlog, but encouraged Bulawayo to sharpen the quality of its judgments.
And last week Justice Lawrence Kamocha said there was shortage of personnel in the southern part of the country.
“The five judges handle criminal and civil cases from the whole of Midlands, Bulawayo, Matabeleland South and North provinces,” he said. “The judges deal with all criminal and civil appeals from all magistrates’ courts. What this means is there is a very heavy workload for the five judges.”
Kamocha said there are about 221 dockets in Midlands which are waiting to be dealt with by the High Court circuit which he, however, said only visits the area for two weeks three times a year.
Harare High Court
While the head of the judiciary passed positive comments for most courts in the land, he expressed concern with the level of laxity displayed by some judges at the High Court.
He said only five High Court judges performed to expectation in the 2014 legal year while some among their 25 colleagues were so lazy that they wrote only two judgments in a year in which others delivered as many as 72.
The Magistrates’ Courts
These courts also did remarkably well, completing all of the applications that were made in 2014.
Records show that the court received a total of 190 359 criminal cases and managed to complete 197 568, eating into the backlog and completing more cases than it had received.
The number of pending cases or backlog consists of fresh matters which are 2 947 for the whole country.
Law consultant Mr Alex Magaisa said the development could be the result of both staff shortages and laxity.
“The backlog of cases referred to by the Chief Justice suggests that either the judicial offices are too few or that some of them are not pulling their weight. I read that the Chief Justice was very scathing in his criticism of some of the High Court judges whom he essentially accused of laziness, neglect of duty and incompetence,” he said.
“But he also praised some of them like Justice Nicholas Mathonsi, who has really made a name for himself. The justice system needs more of his type — talented, knowledgeable, passionate and industrious.”
Mr Magaisa said the numbers of judicial officers could be increased adding that not all lawyers are corrupt as some would like to believe. “I don’t think it is fair to make a blanket conclusion that lawyers have lost integrity. As with every profession, there are bad apples, but that does not tarnish the entire profession.”
