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NATIONAL ASSEMBLY
QUESTION FOR WRITTEN REPLY
PARLIAMENTARY QUESTION NO.: 147
147. Mrs D ASchäfer (DA) to ask the Minister of Justice and Constitutional
Development:
1) How many legal matters were dealt with by his department (a) in the
(i) 2009-10, (ii) 2010-11 and (iii) 2011-12 financial years and (b)
during the period 1 April 2012 up to the latest specified date for
which information is available;
2) a) how many of the specified legal matters were dealt with by (i) the
State Attorney and (ii) private attorneys during the specified periods
and (b) what are the reasons why his department was not represented by
the State Attorney in each specified case;
3) what total amounts were paid by his department to (a) the State
Attorney and (b) private attorneys during the specified periods?
REPLY:
I wish to inform the Honourable Member that, the total legal matters that
were handled by my Department from 2009 to 2013 is 52 626. This total
includes legal matters referred to as civil litigation matters, which are
comprised of civil claims and motions. It should be noted that, given the
manner in which litigation statistics are compiled, it is not possible to
strictly categorise the number of litigation matters according to the
respective financial years, as some matters run over several financial
years while others (particularly motions), are often finalised within weeks
or months. All matters dealt with by the Department on behalf of all State
Departments are illustrated in the table below:
|NUMBERING |FINANCIAL |LITIGATION |DEEDS |GRAND |TOTAL PAID (R) |
| |YEAR |CASES | |TOTAL | |
|1) (a) (i) |01/04/2009 -|8102 |5699 |13801 | 18 436 594 |
| |31/03/2010 | | | | |
|(1) (a) (ii)|01/04/2010 -|7950 | 4965 |12915 | 23 553 598 |
| |31/03/2011 | | | | |
|(1) (a) |01/04/2011 -|9257 |4321 |13578 | 28 428 373 |
|(iii) |31/03/2012 | | | | |
|(1) (b) |01/04/2012 -|8570 |3762 |12332 | 34 089 986 |
| |20/02/2013 | | | | |
|TOTAL | | | | |104 508 551 |
The total number of cases is combined for both State Attorneys
and private attorneys. The Departmentâs current systems are unable to
currently differentiate between the number of matters handled by the
State Attorney and private attorneys. The differentiation is only
captured when costs and disbursements are paid by the State Attorney.
Going forward, measures will be put in place to capture such
differentiation in future.
Save for the justified exceptions mentioned below, the
Department exclusively instructs the State Attorney in all civil
litigation matters. The only exceptions are instances where the
State Attorney is legally precluded by a conflict of interests to
act on behalf of the Department and instances that require
specialization (i.e.: where there exists no expertise within the
Office of the State Attorney).
No additional amounts are paid to State Attorneys, as they
are in the employ of the State. The total amount paid to
private attorneys which includes correspondent attorneys for the
period concerned amounts to R104 508 551. As some of these
attorneys were appointed to act on behalf of client Departments,
the monies concerned, are being claimed back from the relevant
Government Departmentsâ concerned.