Lazy judges up their performance

High Court judges who came under sharp rebuke by Chief  Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku for being lazy have processed more than 770 cases compared to about 400 judgments they delivered during the whole of 2014.

While opening the 2015 legal year, Chidyausiku expressed grave disappointment at the performance of some High Court judges, while singling out just five of them for a stellar performance.

Judge Justice Nicholas Mathonsi was singled out as the highest performer, had delivered a record 72 judgments that year.

By July 15 this year, a total of 619 written judgments had been delivered by judges at the Harare High Court, while those at the Bulawayo High Court had delivered 153 judgments.

This is in contrast to the 406 judgments delivered by both the Harare and Bulawayo High Courts in 2014.

By last week, the Supreme Court had delivered judgments in 45 cases compared to the 80 delivered the whole of last year. The 80 cases adjudicated upon by the court in 2014 reflected an improvement on the 65 cases concluded by the same period in 2013.

Harare lawyer, Vote Muza, said the Chief Justice's approach was the best under the circumstances.

"Gone are the days when judges went unsupervised and did as they please, spending great time at their farms instead of their chambers," Muza said.

 "Some of the grounds on which a judge may be relieved of his/her duties are gross incompetence, or gross misconduct. I believe an aggravated failure to deliver judgments on time or failure to deliver judgments constitutes gross incompetence," said Muza.

United Kingdom-based lawyer, Alex Magaisa, said Chidyausiku's public condemnation of poor performance had brought about accountability among the judges.