The NFP welcomes the report of the department of the Office of the Chief Justice and Judicial Administration, Vote 22, tabled here today. We also welcome the measures that the department is putting in place, particularly with the different courses that you are planning to put in particularly with the criminal court skills, the chief justice skills and I think importantly the domestic violence and the spousal and child maintenance but I think we have a lot of weaknesses there
particularly so I am glad that you are putting in some measures in terms of that. But, some weaknesses or challenges that we have identified as the NFP, first of all, are the issue of postponements; particularly in the lower courts, you get a postponement after postponement and at exorbitant cost particularly to the victim. Now they have to repeatedly ... and legal costs in South Africa today are not cheap. Lawyers and attorneys today are milking clients and it has now become a ruthless business, to be honest, so, I think it is one of the problems that we have identified.
The other thing is I think there needs to be greater co-ordination of effort between the Department of Justice and the SA Police Service, SAPS, and correctional services, of course, because there appears to be, and this is what I identified in discussions with some of them, while the police have the responsibility of arresting people and putting them there, the courts are just there to get them off the roll and very often what we find is that matters are being struck off the roll and things and I think we need to look at that in terms of the challenges that some of our people are facing. The other problem that we have particularly in the lower courts and I think I am coming to the issue of the maintenance courts, there appears to be some kind of or there are serious allegations of collusion particularly not only in maintenance courts but in
particular when it comes to after-hours bails. What is actually happening is this link between the prosecutors who are giving after- hours bails together with police officers and with attorneys and that is why you would find that in certain matters that people get arrested and hours later are given bail and then the police would have done their work but what is then happening at the end of the day is that people are out in the streets again and people become reluctant and do not want to go back and report these cases because they feel that it is a waste of the exercise. So, I think it is another matter that we need to look at. Added to that, the other problem that we found is the assistance that victims get particularly in the lower courts again when it comes to issues of maintenance and things like that.
What we found with this is that absconding fathers - I think we have some in the House - either do not want to pay or they run away from city to city and the officials are not assisting, maybe it is not in their mandate, but to be able to assist in bringing in these people from the different cities that they are running off to, to be able to get them, working in collusion with cops in the other cities, to be able to identify them and bring them to book because otherwise these women in particular for the maintenance of their children have
to repeatedly run to courts and it seems to be a serious problem. The NFP supports and welcomes this report. Thank you.