The South African documentary, Courting Justice, spends many minutes showing the country’s pioneering female judges carefully robing, highlighting their transformation into women of power.
Collars are smoothed out, unruly hairs put back in their place and the ensemble is given a final look-over in the mirror before they step out to face the courtroom.
”We did that deliberately because we had the feeling that when they are robing they are putting on this public persona,” filmmaker Jane Thandi Lipman said at Africa’s biggest cinema festival, Fespac in Ouagadougou, which ends on Saturday.
”The robes represent a device to give a sense of power,” she said.
”As they carefully put on their robes every little detail is followed and there is this sense of control and order,” Lipman told Agence France-Presse after a screening of her film at the festival, where it is competing for a best documentary award.
Getting access to the select group of South African judges — women make up only 18% of the judiciary — was a difficult task.
”They were very reluctant. Judges need to be private, they need to be separate from the rest of society, they need to have the space to be able to make their judgements without influence,” Lipman explained.
After a lengthy process of research and getting to know the women, the filmmaker was able to gain their trust and follow them over a period of six months.
The women are mostly black and in pioneering positions, becoming judges only after the end of apartheid in the 1990s and South Africa’s first democratic elections in 1994, which swept the African National Congress (ANC) into power.
They talk movingly about their road to the judiciary and the sense of duty they feel to serve their country by serving on the bench.
While the documentary touches on the struggle under apartheid and the difficulties the women faced, it is secondary to the feeling of hope and optimism for the future they show.
The documentary focuses on their everyday life and sees the women also talk about their workload and their family and how to balance the two.
Courting Justice has had a good reception in South Africa, where it was shown on television recently at a time when the judiciary has been heavily criticised.
ANC leader Jacob Zuma has been battling corruption charges that have caused his supporters to lash out at the judiciary for being ”counter-revolutionary”, prompting fears about the judicial independence and the balance of power.
”At this time the film has quite a lot of resonance for people. It has had a good response,” Lipman said.
”There is a general feeling that we want more women, women of colour in positions of power and making judgements”.
At the moment the judiciary is a male-dominated profession in South Africa. Ultimately the desire to inspire other women to become judges is what pushed the women in the documentary to tell their story.
”For a lot of the women, especially the black women judges, involved what was important to them was to try to inspire other young women to come into the profession and to see how it’s possible to juggle having a career, being a partner, being a mother and still make a difference,” Lipman said. — AFP
