The Department of Justice expects the auditor general to give its management a clean bill of health — but Deputy Minister of Justice Johnny de Lange clearly does not share this optimistic view, his own officials say.
They say De Lange told managers at the launch of the department’s management and leadership development programme two weeks ago that there were too many managers, and they were not working in tandem for the benefit of the department.
Business Day reported on Thursday that the auditor general is set to give the department, once regarded as the worst performing government unit, an unqualified audit report for the first time since 1994.
”De Lange spoke about managers who are incompetent and he claimed a skills deficit in the department,” a justice department official who attended the meeting told the Mail & Guardian.
De Lange also reportedly warned that the days of officials leaving the department only to return as consultants were over. ”He said if they want to work for the department they should stay,” the official said.
De Lange last year caused a political and judicial storm, while still Parliament’s justice portfolio committee chairperson, when he called judges ”lazy, overpaid, hypersensitive and prone to hysterical outbursts”.
The official said there were constant complaints about managers attending conferences, meetings and other gatherings locally and abroad that had no direct link with the work of the department. De Lange noted this in an off-the-cuff speech, in Boksburg on the East Rand.
The Department of Justice has eight deputy directors general, each in charge of one sub-department.
Justice spokesperson Nathi Kheswa said he could not confirm the Business Day story, but the allegation that the minister was critical of the numbers of managers and their effectiveness was ”a great distortion”.
”The deputy minister raised the issue of the various units operating in silos. He said it should act as a unit and not have a situation where one hand does not know what the other is doing,” said Kheswa, who added: ”There had been indications in the past that business operations were not operating as they should.”
Although the audit report is expected to praise the work done by department Director General Vusi Pikoli and chief financial officer Alan Mackenzie, the organised attorneys’ body is not so convinced.
An editorial in the August issue of legal journal De Rebus was critical of the manner in which court services were being neglected and lambasted the use of money that the journal said ought to be spent on these services.
”It was alarming to learn from Pikoli and Mackenzie that the delivery of resources for the justice system was being hampered by R433-million in forced savings, some of which was to pay for an ‘apartheid’ debt in the form of bad debts by the former homelands,” said De Rebus.
De Rebus referred to a speech made by Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson to the parliamentary justice committee saying that court buildings countrywide were in a sorry state and warning that the deterioration of infrastructure would eventually have an adverse effect on the judicial system.
”In an institution as vital as the courts and the judiciary, one must be very careful in trying to effect savings — if you do not provide the resources that are necessary, you are actually undermining a system which in time can cease to be a system in which we can take pride,” Justice Chaskalson told parliamentarians.
A Justice Department insider, who declined to be named, said it was well known that things were not working well at the department ”but everyone is afraid to say so.
”The Legal Practice Bill is one example [of how the wheels grind slowly at the department]. The Minister [of Justice and Constitutional Development] has drafted a Legal Practice Bill and the Law Society of South Africa has drafted its own.
”Under normal circumstances you have people contributing to the drafting of a Bill and not drafting their own. But lawyers have resorted to drafting their own because no one in the Justice Department is able to say what is happening with that Bill,” said the official.