Chairperson, during the brief tenure of Judge Sandile Ngcobo as Chief Justice, there was a sense in the air of institution building. It was an atmosphere reminiscent of the years when the two Constitutions were being negotiated, and our new institutions were first being established. This Bill, read together with the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, gives the first legislative effect to the plans for an institutionally independent judicial branch. These plans were long in the making among the judges, and they were driven by Judge Ngcobo, who was also the first incumbent of the newly created office of the Chief Justice. His successor, Chief Justice Mogoeng, has continued the work of preparing for a judiciary-led court administration.
A Bill will be brought, next year I trust, to create the independent administrative agency which will take over from the Department of Justice in running the courts. Judge Ngcobo did the preparatory work in looking at models in other jurisdictions for such agencies.
Former Chief Justices Chaskalson and Langa have been working on models for the office of the Chief Justice. That office is currently set up as a government department, because it was the only available way to create it in the short term. It functions in unusual conditions, however, given its independence. Sir, it remains unsatisfactory that it does not yet function on a legislated independent basis.
This Bill does, however, take the process forward in recognising the head of that office, the secretary-general, and in making the secretary-general the accounting officer. It is no longer the Director-General of Justice as the tabled Bill provided. That is more than significant. The hon Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development will still be dealing with budgetary requirements, but they will now be set by the judiciary. Parliament will, of course, continue to appropriate the funds for the running of the office and the courts, and keep account of how they are spent.
This Bill takes the place of and repeals, as the hon Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development described, almost the whole range of laws and provisions under which our courts were set up in the past. They range from the Supreme Court Act of 1959 to the provisions of the old Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei constitutions, decrees and Acts. It has taken all these years, and five Ministries of Justice since 1994, finally to achieve the rationalisation which was described and required in schedule 6(16)(6) of the final Constitution, which asks for a judicial system suited to the constitutional dispensation.
This has been a long time coming and the hon Minister will feel justifiably proud when this "sees the light of day", as he said. I recall that the Minister has said in the past, and I think I attribute it correctly, that everything in Justice seems to take 10 years. Sir, I think we have at least brought this one in just before it hits the 10-year mark!
In addition, the Bill creates the new system of court governance by the judges themselves. Now, nobody must underestimate what a huge breakthrough this is. The Chief Justice becomes the head of the judiciary under the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution. In clause 8 of this Bill, he is given the tools for the job.
That is the task of convening forums of judges through whom he may set the norms and standards for judicial functions and for the efficiency of the courts. The one true power that he acquires is the issuing of protocols and directives on these matters. These protocols and directives may only be issued if they enjoy the majority support of the heads of court to whom they will be applicable.
Judge Mogoeng has lost no time in making work of the new approach. At a strategic planning session of the judges in August, a judicial case management system was adopted to encourage presiding officers to start dictating the pace of litigation, in order to counter postponements and case backlogs. There is already progress, it is said, at those courts where the system is being implemented.
We are, finally, after all these years of delay, beginning to move. Even the appointment of court managers and registrars will now be done in consultation with a head of court, and their functions will be determined, after our committee amendments, not by the department, but by the secretary- general and the Chief Justice. This alone will not only advance the independence of the judicial branch, but also counteract some of the things that have gone wrong in the department, as I pointed out in the Budget Vote debate. Adv Adams, I pointed it out. Jobs as court managers have been for sale in Gauteng, and the effects of corruption on appointments have inevitably been from corruption in the court administration itself.
With regard to the process of building the third pillar of the state, we are creating a truly institutional independent judicial branch. The process of building this third pillar of the state will be incremental, but this Bill makes an excellent start. This is thanks in no small measure to the work and sage advice of Adv J B Skosana and Adv Johan de Lange sitting with him, not least for interacting with the judiciary, over and above our portfolio committee meetings with the two highest courts. They are two gentlemen of very great expertise and we thank them for their work. [Applause.]