I don't think it is a question of blocking anyone anywhere because as you correctly point out, people will always, as they get better skilled, move on to better positions. I do not expect any person and I don't expect any prosecutor, who can get a better salary in another position - even in government - not to take it.
So that is not the issue but what we are going to have to look at is that our system doesn't have loopholes and gaps within it; that you do not create a system in government which actually implodes on itself. It is fragmented; it is wrong. What you want to do is if someone wants to work in government and if you have one year legal experience, then you should be on a certain level and you should get paid for that.
You should not, as is happening now, have one year legal experience and then because you are upwardly mobile because you may be female or black, be able to take a job at a five-year experience level and get another salary. In that way, we undermine the system.
That does not mean that we shouldn't have affirmative action policies and so on and that doesn't mean that someone should not be promoted. The problem is at the moment the only rule there is that you apply for a job and you get it or you don't. What we are starting to say is that if you want to move from a particular level you should at least go through a process of evaluation in order for people to see that you are ready for that post and then it will be fine for us to do that.
At the moment, if you are in government, for example, you are looking for a person with legal skills, you look around and you will quickly find someone, a relatively junior someone, who has been trained into a post. They have just been trained and now we move them on. It's the same with the prosecutors. Do you know how much money we spend to train a prosecutor until he has got five years experience and then he never uses it again? He or she becomes a magistrate.
That kind of inequity that exists in the system - I must be honest - there is not an easy answer for it. For example, we cannot - suddenly there is this gap of R80 000 between a magistrate's and a prosecutor's post - just go through the system and say: Well, everyone at five years' experience, we are now going to put you up by R80 000. That impacts on the people above them who must go up by R80 000; the people below also go up by R80 000 and we just cannot do that. Firstly, we can't afford it, and secondly, it doesn't make sense.
What we are really saying is that we have to try and find answers within what we have got to try and attract the best legal skills we can in government, but, equally, we cannot have a system where we are undermining and destabilising government departments because people are forever on the move somewhere since they are getting, for the same qualification and same experience, a totally different salary at another place. That is really the issue.
Particulars regarding suspension of magistrates with pay
148. Mr S Shiceka (ANC) asked the Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development:
In the past 12 months, (a) how many magistrates were suspended with pay, (b) how long have they been suspended and (c) what is the cost of these suspensions to her department? CO2952E