Despite improvements made in the court system over the past five years, the case finalisation rate and outstanding rolls remain a challenge and the concept of night courts is being considered, Justice Minister Brigitte Mabandla said on Tuesday.
Speaking in the National Assembly during debate on her Budget vote, she said one of the key concerns with court management was case backlogs, but a well thought-out strategy should be able to address this matter.
The latest available information — from the end of December 2003 — showed the outstanding number of cases on the roll for district courts to be 149 539, regional courts 43 573, and high courts 1 012.
To address the problem of back-logs, Saturday and additional courts were introduced in 2001, she said.
A total of 75 214 cases were handled by the Saturday and additional courts for the period from February 2001 to March 2004. Additional courts handled 14 935 cases for the period from April 2003 to March 2004 while the Saturday courts handled 8 714 cases for the same period –a total of 23 649 for the 2003/04 period.
Some improvements were also realised with regard to court hours by the Saturday and additional courts. For the period of April 2003 to March 2004 the average number of hours a court spent sitting was five hours and 25 minutes for the district courts and four hours and forty six minutes for the regional courts sitting on Saturdays. Additional courts hours also improved to an average of four hours and one minute in the district courts and to four hours and 22 minutes in the regional courts, respectively, Mabandla said.
The conviction rate for the same period for additional courts was 84% for district courts and 68% for regional courts, while in the Saturday courts it was 65% for district courts and 76% for regional courts.
”The concept of night courts is also being considered with the roleplayers as part of mechanisms to continue to work the case backlogs down,” Mabandla said. – Sapa