The following speech was delivered in Parliament today by the DA’s Shadow Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, Adv Glynnis Breytenbach MP, during the Budget Vote on Justice and Constitutional Development.
Honorouble Chairperson, Honourable Members,
A year has passed since we were last here debating the budget of vote 21. I wish I could say that things have changed for the better, that the same tired old issues do not require being highlighted here today. Unfortunately, this is not the position.
In fact, despite the best efforts of the Minister to portray improvement, and despite the thin veneer of varnish that the ANC members will try to apply to these issues, little to no progress has been made on critical issues, and in some instances the regress in performance has continued.
This, Chairperson and Honourable Members, must be attributed to the lackadaisical and ineffective approach of the Minister and his deputy.
A Minister that is not able to understand and consequently convince his cabinet colleagues that the administration of justice is a labour-intensive exercise, and therefore should not be subject to the same budget cuts as other departments that may not necessarily render a critical service, is obviously a poor leader.
Our sympathy, therefore, must lie with the rank and file within the department and its various entities, who must continue to render these essential services in the face of not only budgetary constraints, but must also contend with vacuous political leadership.
It is astonishing that the Minister is always ready, willing and able to operate in the political space, but rarely in the last three years has he been able to garner the necessary energy to perform his executive functions.
Let me substantiate this by discussing the following areas of grave concern within this budget vote:
• The Minister is responsible inter alia for the appointment of Masters’ of the High Courts and the administration of the Guardian’s fund and deceased and insolvent estates. It is no secret, and I am sure it is in fact common cause, that all the offices of the Masters’ of the High Courts are in an abysmal shambles. What is also of concern is the perceived unwillingness to implement a system to address service delivery complaints of the public in respect of these offices. It is of no use whatsoever for members of the public who have grievances about the administration of estates to lodge complaints with the institution responsible for it. We have advocated since 2014 for some form of internal ombud to deal with these complaints and the only response has been an annual promise that the Department is looking into it. Perhaps the Minister thought that he would address this issue once he has solved his multitude of problems in respect of the proposed policy in respect of insolvency practitioners, which has been found to be unconstitutional by both the Western Cape High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal. This of course, should come as no surprise as the Minister and his Deputy have laid bare, for all to see, their poor understanding of our constitution.
Honourable Members, cast your minds back to debates on the Public Protector’s report on Nkandla, and more specifically, whether the remedial action ordered by the Public Protector is binding and the debate on government’s failure to arrest Omar Al Bashir, during which Minister Masutha and Deputy Minister Jeffrey respectively advanced arguments later held by our courts to be without any basis in law, and more specifically, constitutional law.
While we certainly don’t want to speculate whether these failures can only be ascribed to a poor understanding of the law, or whether these arguments were motivated by political grovelling for the benefit of the hand that feeds them, one would ironically hope that the latter would rather be the case, as it gives some explanation for the fact that the Minister and his deputy both seem to have a rather flimsy grasp on legal principles, or any principles for that matter.
• The next area of grave concern is the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA). The Minister, when it suits him, is quick to remind us that he, in terms of the constitution, is the Minister responsible for the administration of justice and the NPA. However, what we have seen since 2014 is a Minister in a constant state of dithering in respect of the problems facing the management structures of the NPA. At least a constant state of dithering whenever those in the upper structures of the NPA, captured by President Zuma and his henchmen, are under scrutiny;
• His unwillingness to deal with Mwrebi and Jiba, hiding behind appeals they have lodged to justify why they are on stay at home pay well in excess of R1 million annually each;
• His failure to accept the findings of retired Constitutional Court Justice Zak Yacoob in respect of the mayhem reigning at the NPA head office. Juxtapose this, however, by his sudden burst of energy and his personal involvement in the collapsing of the Cassim enquiry into the fitness of Nxasana to hold office as well as his alleged involvement, along with the ubiquitous Michael Hulley, in the negotiations of the notorious and putative settlement agreement reached with the then National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), Mxolisi Nxasana; and
• The picture is completed of a minister who is responsible for the NPA and its functionality only when it suits him.
Chairperson, Honourable Members, obviously I will again be accused today debating while embittered about my own involvement with the NPA. But before I am again so accused, I leave you with the following, to underscore that the Minister’s inabilty to focus on what is important, has had the following knock-on effects since 2014:
• The number of cases finalised with a verdict has decreased between 2014 and 2016 from 33 430 to 31 832 in the regional courts, and from 284 741 to 278 006 in the district courts. The response of the Department and the Minister to this: they removed this indicator from the 2017/18 annual performance plan; and
• Simultaneously the number of cases on the backlog court roll in the district courts has increased from 12 572 to 14 924 over the same period. The response to this: all smoke and mirror stuff with a formula to be applied to determine whether cases’ quality be included on the backlog roll being changed from year to year.
Also bear in mind that under the watch of this Minister, the NPA has now been allowed to significantly lower many of its performance targets and remove others completely from its annual performance plan, proving to us all that while the Minister is apparently prepared to meet with the new NDPP on Monday afternoon at Luthuli House, despite the fact of a long standing and apparently vital dentist appointment of the NDPP, to discuss what they believed to be the anarchy caused by students, he has apparently not yet found the time to inform the NDPP that whilst the latter must focus on eliminating political opponents, he should still ensure that the NPA efficiently also does its day job.