OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 6.00PM.
THE justice sytstem fails the majority of South African people, Justice Minister Dullah Omar said on Tuesday, explaining why he supports the concept of community courts.
Addressing a seminar in Johannesburg on alternative justice systems, Omar said: “The current justice system does not provide everyone with access to justice and must be changed.”
Community courts will relieve the formal justice system of petty offences and would develop the idea of “people’s courts” which operated in the 1980s, Omar said.
People’s courts evolved within communities during the apartheid years as an ad hoc substitute for formal courts, which were bound by apartheid law. “The idea came from the black community but the concept has no colour. Even white communities can benefit. They too suffer from a lack of access to justice,” Omar said.
The courts will rely on social and moral pressure and their main role will be mediation, reconciliation and arbitration. They will operate withing the parmeters of the Constitution, he said.