The offices of the attorneys general around the country are virtually bare, reports Vuyo Mvoko
OFFICES of the attorneys general in Gauteng and the Cape are heading for a crisis as senior prosecutors make a dash for entry to the Bar before it closes next week — undermining a whole spate of “third force” trials that need to be pushed through the courts in the next few months.
Problems hit the offices of the Johannesburg, Pretoria and Cape Town attorneys general this week, lifting a lid on a problem the government has been been aware of since it took office almost two years ago.
Senior state attorneys and advocates, most in a rush to make it to the Bar before entries close next week, have resigned. The Bar’s intakes happen only during the first weeks of March and of August.
Said Ministry of Justice representative Barend Heystek this week: “We may very soon be in a crisis, but we hope that will not happen.”
At the Pretoria attorney general’s office, advocates Andre Steenkamp and Jannie Greyling, who have been part of an investigating team into “third force” activities, were preparing to leave the office at the end of this week.
And only one junior advocate will be left at the vehicle theft syndicate in Pretoria, after its head, senior state advocate Paul Huygens, as well as three others in the syndicate, left this week.
A division dealing in specialised commercial crime in Johannesburg had to be closed last month, according to Justice Department representative Pieter du Rand, “because there was no manpower”. And the crisis is rippling through down to the lower courts where, he says, “there is too much work for those who have been left behind”.
At the Johannesburg attorney general’s office six people had left by Thursday, including Koos Pretorious, who has been the senior prosecutor in the trial involving the spate of bombings that took place just before the 1994 elections, allegedly perpetrated by the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging.
Chairman of the State Advocates’ Society, Billy Downer, says “nothing up to now” has happened in attempts to avert the crisis.
Apparently the government, through the Public Service Commission (PSC), is offering increases of between 7% and 24%, while the employees say their research has found that state advocates need an increase of between 50% and 60% to be on a par with the private sector.
Downer says Justice Minister Dullar Omar “has done his best” to deal with both their grievances — Omar has agreed that their salaries are too low and, in what Downer calls “a morale booster”, assured white males they will not lose their jobs in the wake of affirmative action.
Downer believes “government spending priorities are not perhaps as they should be”, but whatever the case, he says, the present salaries situation is “unacceptable”.
On affirmative action, he says “the department has no clear policy”. There are no quotas and nobody seems to know what criteria are being used to implement the policy.
The salaries issue is being handled at the Central Chamber of Bargaining, but the PSC offer has been turned down twice by the professional personnel representatives.