‘Free’ judges, lack of resources: Hlophe bemoans judicial ‘nightmare’ after budget cuts

Former Western Cape High Court judge John Hlophe has lamented the potential effect of budget cuts on the judiciary and its work.

Hlophe participated in the budget vote debate on the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) in a mini-plenary of the National Assembly on Thursday.

The OCJ has been allocated a budget of R2.3 billion for the 2024/2025 financial year.

This represents a 13% decrease in the OCJ’s budget compared to the previous financial year.

Judiciary backlog

Hlophe, alongside other Members of Parliament, expressed concerns over budget cuts to the OCJ, saying “the courts must do more work with less resources”.

The former judge, who is now the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party’s chief whip, warned the budget cuts would cause problems for high courts in particular given the massive backlog.

“I’m not aware of a single high court in this country which does not have a backlog,” Hlope said during the debate on Thursday.

He suggested that the backlogs resulted from “a wide range of factors”, including load shedding.

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“The other one has to do with the fact that it is often difficult to get prisoners who are appearing in the courts for trial timeously. These are all factors that impact on the finalisation of cases timeously and this causes a huge backlog.”

‘Practitioners who work free’

The MK party chief whip said the courts have been forced to find a solution by recruiting legal practitioners, who work free, to assist with the backlog.

“The heads of court is put at a tremendous disadvantage [because] in some courts you would have 20 or 30 pro bono [judges]. I don’t know how they manage that, it’s a nightmare.

“Now correspondingly, administrative staff has not been increased. There are many vacancies throughout the courts in this country, which have not been filled so that impacts on the quality of the work that must be done at the end of the day.”

Watch the plenary below:

‘Malicious prosecutions’

Hlophe highlighted that the budget failed to ensure that courts were more accessible to citizens who live in rural areas.

“Sometimes those areas don’t have bridges and it has been raining [so] they will not gain access to the courts because of lack of infrastructure in those areas.

“Maybe the department [should] consider other options that may be available, for example having more second courts in those areas. Access to justice, particularly in those areas, is still a huge challenge for us.”

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The former judge further claimed that “malicious prosecutions” were on the rise in South Africa.

“I’m not talking about wrongful arrests; I’m not talking about malicious prosecutions. Those cases are on the rise, and they impact on the budget of this department.”

Hlophe added the solution was better training for prosecutors.

Hlophe heads to JSC

Earlier this week, Hlophe was elected to represent the National Assembly on the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).

This has sparked a debate about the gap in the law allowing impeached persons to become MPs.

The Democratic Alliance (DA), the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) and Freedom Front (FF) Plus objected to Hlophe’s nomination to the JSC on the basis that he was found guilty of gross misconduct by the same judicial body.

Hlophe was impeached as a judge by the National Assembly in February this year.

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