Advocate Dumisa Ntsebeza listens to the findings of the police report that confirms the police shot dead 34 miners.
Of the 473 senior counsel from whose ranks candidate judges are selected, only nine were black women, the Sunday Times said. Of the nine women, only four were African.
Twenty white women were practising as senior counsel in South Africa, the newspaper reported.
A paper prepared by the University of Cape Town's democratic governance and rights unit lashed out at the Judicial Service Commission for the slow pace of gender transformation in the judiciary, it was reported.
The paper said only 28% of judicial officers nationally were women as of October 2012.
JSC spokesperson Dumisa Ntsebeza told the Sunday Times that government was failing black and female advocates by not giving them enough work to allow them to get experience and be considered for appointment as senior counsel.
"It's a scandal that we should have only four black female silks in this day and age," Ntsebeza was quoted as saying.
"There is no political will on the part of our government. You can't ask private industry to start briefing us, but you can insist [that] the state law adviser briefs black advocates," he said.
Jacob Skosana, head of policy in the department of justice, said the Legal Practice Bill which proposed radical change in the legal profession would address the problem.
"Access to the profession is controlled by those who are within the club and whether you pass exams or not, there are people who decide who gets admitted [as senior counsel]," said Skosana.
Transformation 'imperative'
Meanwhile, newly-appointed Constitutional Court judge Mbuyiseli Madlanga has warned that groups not represented on the Bench may be "at the receiving end of injustice".
Madlanga told City Press he believed transformation of the judiciary was necessary at all levels of the Bench in order to develop the country's justice system.
"Transformation of the judiciary is imperative. Try as hard as one may to be open-minded, there is that self that one brings to the Bench and which one cannot extricate oneself from," he told the newspaper in an interview.
Madlanga's appointment, with effect from August 1, was announced by President Jacob Zuma on Monday.
"One is what he or she is, not only because of the innate make-up but also as a result of external influences like race, background, education, culture etc," Madlanga said.
"If the Bench is not demographically representative, the groups that are not represented in it will forever not only be disadvantaged, but may well be at the receiving end of injustice," he was quoted as saying.
Madlanga, who is a senior advocate, is currently an evidence leader at the Farlam Commission of Inquiry into the deaths of 44 people during wage-related protests in Marikana, North West.
He was also the evidence leader in the inquiry into former national police commissioner Bheki Cele's fitness to hold office. – Sapa