Opinion / Columnist
Name and shame them
22 Jan 2015 at 02:12hrs | Views
CHIEF Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku broke with tradition last week when he gave a frank assessment of the performance of his subordinates during the official opening of the 2015 legal year. His speech was unprecedented. For the first time, he gave the public some insights into how his judges are performing. Hopefully, this should jolt those who are sleeping behind the wheel to pull up their stockings.
While Chidyausiku deserves a pat on the back for reading the riot act, he should, in future, take it a step further by naming and shaming the culprits. Statistics show that the country's three higher courts namely the Supreme Court, the High Court and the Magistrates Court have a backlog of 14 576 cases from last year, which shows that the wheels of justice are turning slowly. Contributing a huge chunk of the backlog is the High Court which has been plagued by laziness - a common disease in the public service.
There were some exceptions though. Justice Nicholas Mathonsi, a no-nonsense arbiter known for not giving pedestrian judgments, had an outstanding year, handing down 72 judgments in 2014. The performance of some of his colleagues, however, left a lot to be desired. For example, the least performing four judges had a pathetic two, three, six and 11 judgments respectively for the full year. Shame on you!
Mathonsi's accomplishment serves to demonstrate that we still have got some professional men and women on the bench who are committed to giving their best in spite of the poor conditions of service across the civil service. Zimbabweans deserve judges who give their all in the swift delivery of justice. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.
It is disheartening that some of the judges only come to their offices to abuse State resources such as telephones, computers etcetera while doing their private business during working hours. It is also not a secret that some of the judges split their time between running their farms and fulfilling their job descriptions which commit them to serving the people of Zimbabwe unreservedly.
If it were in the private sector, the indolent judges would have long earned the boot. The bench should be no exception. Like the Chief Justice said, some of these judges are clinging onto their jobs courtesy of a legal provision that protects them from being removed from office. In other words, Chidyausiku's hands are tied. All he can do is talk ad infinitum as he cannot institute disciplinary action to flush out the lethargic judges who are shortchanging the taxpayer.
We don't think putting judges on probation can address this problem as suggested by Chidyausiku. What it would simply do is to encourage them to work harder during the probation period only to relax once they have been confirmed in their positions. The solution is to have realistic performance measures and giving Parliament the responsibility to fire under performers.
While Chidyausiku deserves a pat on the back for reading the riot act, he should, in future, take it a step further by naming and shaming the culprits. Statistics show that the country's three higher courts namely the Supreme Court, the High Court and the Magistrates Court have a backlog of 14 576 cases from last year, which shows that the wheels of justice are turning slowly. Contributing a huge chunk of the backlog is the High Court which has been plagued by laziness - a common disease in the public service.
There were some exceptions though. Justice Nicholas Mathonsi, a no-nonsense arbiter known for not giving pedestrian judgments, had an outstanding year, handing down 72 judgments in 2014. The performance of some of his colleagues, however, left a lot to be desired. For example, the least performing four judges had a pathetic two, three, six and 11 judgments respectively for the full year. Shame on you!
Mathonsi's accomplishment serves to demonstrate that we still have got some professional men and women on the bench who are committed to giving their best in spite of the poor conditions of service across the civil service. Zimbabweans deserve judges who give their all in the swift delivery of justice. As they say, justice delayed is justice denied.
It is disheartening that some of the judges only come to their offices to abuse State resources such as telephones, computers etcetera while doing their private business during working hours. It is also not a secret that some of the judges split their time between running their farms and fulfilling their job descriptions which commit them to serving the people of Zimbabwe unreservedly.
If it were in the private sector, the indolent judges would have long earned the boot. The bench should be no exception. Like the Chief Justice said, some of these judges are clinging onto their jobs courtesy of a legal provision that protects them from being removed from office. In other words, Chidyausiku's hands are tied. All he can do is talk ad infinitum as he cannot institute disciplinary action to flush out the lethargic judges who are shortchanging the taxpayer.
We don't think putting judges on probation can address this problem as suggested by Chidyausiku. What it would simply do is to encourage them to work harder during the probation period only to relax once they have been confirmed in their positions. The solution is to have realistic performance measures and giving Parliament the responsibility to fire under performers.
Source - Financial Gazette
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