The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) was not transparent in the way it appointed judges, one of its members said on Tuesday.
Izak Smuts, who sits on the JSC as a representative of the advocates’ profession, was speaking during interviews in Cape Town for posts on the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).
Responding to a remark by former Labour Court judge president Ray Zondo, an SCA candidate, that the appointment process was transparent, Smuts said: “In my view we have a particularly opaque way of appointing judges.”
He said that when Zondo left the venue, the JSC would sit down in closed session in what would appear from the outside to be a smoke-filled room, to deliberate on who should get the posts.
When it announced its decision it would give no reasons, and Zondo would not have “the faintest idea” why the body recommended or rejected him.
Zondo said in reply that though there could be an argument for opening the deliberations to the public, he understood that there might be “certain considerations” why this should not be done.
He accepted that there would not be complete transparency in the appointment process.
Asked by Smuts whether he would be in favour of the numbers of votes being made public, Zondo said this would enhance accountability, but one would have to first examine the Constitution and the law carefully to see if it was permissible.
‘Languages need attention’
Interviews for judges are open to the public.
Zondo also told the JSC that the issue of the languages used in courts needed attention.
He was uncomfortable that Afrikaans and English-speaking litigants and witnesses were able to speak their languages in courts without interpreters, while the same was “generally speaking” not true of other official South African languages.
There were areas where people should be able to speak another language directly to a judge or magistrate.
One of these was the magistrate’s court at Umlazi in KwaZulu-Natal, where a lot of litigants, magistrates and legal representatives spoke Zulu.
If there was a subsequent appeal or review, the proceedings could be translated at that stage.
The JSC is interviewing candidates for 25 posts in 10 courts over the next two weeks.– Sapa.