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Tendai Rupapa Harare Bureau
The Law Society of Zimbabwe (LSZ) yesterday called on Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to spell out specific action to be taken against underperforming judges.
Responding to Justice Chidyausiku’s Monday comments while opening the 2015 legal year, the LSZ said in a statement that just censuring the underperforming judges was not enough.
“The Chief Justice is lauded for openly denouncing neglect of duties particularly by some senior members of the judiciary,” said the LSZ. “However, the LSZ would have been happier if the Chief Justice’s speech had come stronger on how such neglect or failure to perform as reasonably expected will be dealt with.
“The LSZ calls upon the Chief Justice to go beyond merely denouncing such conduct. He ought to come up with concrete measures to deal with errant judges, particularly in the light of the Judicial Code of Conduct which prescribes time frames for finalising matters. This is crucial as it will address the issue of public confidence in the system.”
The LSZ also said it was important that Chief Justice Chidyausiku was “truthful and candid” in his speech.
“The Chief Justice gave praise where it was due, but was equally scathing in his attack on non-performers whom he felt had no excuse for their non-performance,” said the LSZ.
“As a stakeholder in the justice delivery system, the LSZ believes that such an approach is progressive as it correctly informs on appropriate strategies to be adopted.”
Zimbabwe’s three higher courts are saddled with a backlog totalling 14,576 cases carried over from the 2014 legal year, with the majority of the cases being from the High Court some of whose judges were criticised for laziness by Chief Justice Chidyausiku on Monday.
According to statistics from the courts, the High Court’s civil and criminal divisions for both Harare and Bulawayo brought forward a backlog of 14,270 cases, including appeals from the magistrates court into 2015.
The Supreme Court’s backlog is at 187 cases, while the Constitutional Court has the least pending cases at 119.
The three courts had a combined 35,695 cases brought before them in 2014.
While officially opening the 2015 legal year on Monday, Chief Justice Chidyausiku said one of the High Court judges was so lazy to the extent that they managed to write only two judgments for the whole of 2014 compared to others who wrote as many as 72.
Chief Justice Chidyausiku named only five High Court judges as top performers for the 2014 legal year.
He said the poor performance by the other judges called for new ones to be put on probation before being confirmed, as a way of improving the quality of the justice delivery system.
Chief Justice Chidyausiku could not hide his disappointment while disclosing that another judge only wrote two judgments, while two others wrote six and 11 respectively the whole of last year and this left him with mixed feelings about the general performance of the judges.
He commended Constitutional Court and Supreme Court judges and magistrates for being on top of the situation and managing the increasing cases filed last year despite being understaffed.
Online Reporter