Department briefing on Court Services; Corporate Services briefing of 2 May: discussion

Meeting report

SELECT COMMITTEE ON SECURITY AND CONSTITUTIONAL AFFAIRS
3 May 2006
DEPARTMENT BRIEFING ON COURT SERVICES; CORPORATE SERVICES BRIEFING OF 2 MAY: DISCUSSION

Chairperson: Kgoshi L M Mokoena (ANC)

Documents handed out:
Power Point Presentation: Court Services: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 & 6
Briefing to the Parliamentary Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development on Court Services: Part 1, 2, 3, 4 & 5

SUMMARY
The Committee first dealt with questions from the previous day’s meeting that could not be answered due to time constraints. Some of these questions dealt with the challenges facing the Department of Justice in advertising posts, incentives to keep people in government, Truth and Reconciliation Commission reparations, faith in the criminal justice system and the Batho Pele principles for service delivery standards and monitoring.

The Department also made a presentation on the Court Services Branch, highlighting its five key programmes, viz. planning and co-ordination of projects; court performance; protection of vulnerable groups and the enhancement of their rights; court facilities and the financial management of courts.

MINUTES
Continuation of 2 May Discussion

The Chairperson welcomed the delegation from the Department of Justice’s Corporate Services branch and invited Mr Khotso Dewee (Chief Operating Officer (COO)) to respond to questions raised in the 2 May meeting.

Mr Dewee dealt first with a question raised by Mr R Ntuli (ANC, KwaZulu-Natal) on the challenges faced with regard to advertising vacant posts. Mr Dewee believed the question was in reference to his statement that in the last six months they advertised 2143 posts and that it has contributed to reducing their vacancy rate to about 14%. However there is still an estimated 2191 vacancies. He maintained that much progress has been made in the sense that the life-cycle of advertising posts is 26 months, which has now been reduced to three months. However there were still major challenges. A major challenge was the work study division. The point was made that the Department did not have enough staff in the work study division, but mechanisms were being put in place to deal with this and increase capacity while reducing vacancies.

Mr Dewee also dealt with a question about incentives to keep people in government. He argued that the question was difficult to answer as it depended on a number of factors. Some of these included salary levels but this had been addressed by the implementation of senior management positions. The second of these problems were the quality of senior management and leadership roles in the Department. However, the Human Resources division had put together a leadership and development programme for senior managers. A third factor was the competition between the public and private sector. The public sector, he maintained, had serious limitations on remuneration levels. With the economy heading for a 6% growth rate driven by the private sector, he believed that the public service was being put in a precarious position. A job evaluation mechanism had been put into place to assure that people were paid relative to the amount of work they did and the demands of the job. However, here again some challenges remained.

A question was asked about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) reparations process after allegations that some beneficiaries had not been paid yet. Mr Dewee indicated that in terms of monetary reparations, interim reparation of between R2000 and R5700 should have been paid. According to his records, 16654 victims that were identified were paid, which amounted to R15 million. In terms of once-off grants of R30 000 each, the number of recipients was put at 16837 and 15330 grants had been paid. The number that could not be paid amounted to 1507, which could be placed into two categories. These were 1157 persons who could not be traced and 350 that had died. In total, the amount of money spent on reparation amounted to R510 million.

A question was asked about Mr Dewee’s statement that restoring public trust and faith in the criminal justice system should be a priority. Mr Dewee maintained that the problem could be addressed by looking at the efficiency problem and secondly communication, especially outreach programmes. He admitted that that the outreach programme had limitations, but they had employed more staff to address this problem.

Questions were asked about Batho Pele or service standards. Mr Dewee felt that he needed capacity dedicated to monitoring the particular issue of service standards. Hence there would be monitoring, training, feedback, and most importantly, management of performance agreement mechanisms to address this.

The Chairperson thanked Mr Dewee and called for further questions. He asked which line items were not implemented to the extent that money had to be re-channelled into other line functions i.e. which items were budgeted for but failed to the extent that their allocations were not spent.

Mr Ntuli asked if the problem with service standards could be found in the practise of giving specialists management positions which they were not qualified for.

Mr M Thetjeng (DA, Limpopo) asked why the Department lacked a monitoring tool for service standards, as each department should have performance management mechanisms. He also asked about temporary staff and whether they should be made permanent to fill the vacancies.

Mr Dewee responded that the failure to implement all line items was a concern. This could be addressed by implementing a spending policy review every three months and where under-spending was identified proper measures would be taken to address this. With regard to the qualifications of managers, Mr Dewee argued that an assumption of qualifications is made at the point of interview. However there were instances where these managers under-performed which related to the quality of management. With regard to the suggestion that the Department lacked a monitoring tool, Mr Dewee argued that performance agreements were signed with senior management and they were thus expected to monitor service delivery. However, an independent mechanism for monitoring would be more efficient and credible. On the issue of temporary staff, he pointed out that they were hired because of a lack of capacity. Some were very inexperienced and those with experience were employed for such periods that they were effectively permanent employees. Their strategy was to reduce the number of temporary staff and reliance on consultants in order to improve capacity by the end of this financial year.

Court Services Management presentation
Adv S Jiyane (Deputy Director-General: Court Services) dealt with the main functions of Court Services Management. He highlighted that Court Services is structured along five main programmes to achieve the objectives of government. These programmes were planning and co-ordination of projects; court performance; protection of vulnerable groups and the enhancement of their rights; court facilities and the financial management of courts.

Adv Jiyane referred to a comprehensive presentation he had made to the Portfolio Committee on Justice and Constitutional Development on 8 February 2006. His presentation today was essentially a summary of that presentation. Both documents are listed above.

He firstly dealt with the role of Court Services, which included the establishment and maintenance of court facilities, provision of security and court facilities, the promotion of cost-effective and quality court services, promotion of effective management of the flow of cases through the court system, ensuring the provision of appropriate human resources to staff the court services, the promotion of participation in the integrated justice system within the cluster system of government, and finally promoting communication with stakeholders and communities.

One issue raised was the engagement of government with regard to the issue of crime. This related to court performance and addressing the social antecedents to crime. Thus the inclusion of community into this "restorative justice" strategy was stressed. Adv Jiyane also stressed the mainstreaming of court processes and a proper strategy to deal with the case backlog.

His presentation further dealt with assistance to traditional leadership, where he stressed that in order to better assist traditional leaders and hence the majority of the population, restructuring of the justice system was recommended, as the current system was an inherited system that was not tailored to the South African context. Apart from this, he emphasised a need to bridge the gap between cluster work and the work on "the ground" or in the field.

In emphasising the management of court facilities, Adv Jiyane looked briefly at the budget for 2005/2006 (see documents). This section of his presentation focused on condition assessment for all courts; the Improvement of security in court buildings; rehabilitation and maintenance of exiting courts which entailed the creation of mobile courts for rural areas, and with regard to vulnerable groups, provision of new and additional facilities and provision of prefab structures as interim accommodation. Importantly this section dealt with aligning urban and rural development. Some key sections of note were capital works; plans for security in 2006/2007 and the budget for 2006/2007 (see documents).

The bulk of Adv Jiyane’s presentation dealt with vulnerable groups where he emphasised a focus on and the centrality of the victim. He stressed that the victims have often been marginalised and thus the imperative and focus this year was on the victim. His presentation highlighted victim support services entailing the implementing of the Service Charter; specialised courts; family courts, and a focus on child justice or children courts. The Service Charter was strongly emphasised as a national structure. With regard to child justice, Adv Jiyane stressed that a reform approach should be followed by moving child delinquents from secure facilities to country-wide reform schools. Operation Isondlo was highlighted, which entailed improvements to the functioning of the maintenance system by putting systems in place that will enable this system to operate in a more effective and efficient way. Its objectives are to decrease the backlog of maintenance cases; the enforcement of maintenance provisions; building capacity in courts; building positive relationships with communities and stakeholders; and finally family regeneration. His presentation highlighted a number of successes emanating from this programme.

With regard to Family Advocacy, Adv Jiyane highlighted the founding of this office and its mandate. He stressed that this mechanism would play a strong role in crime prevention. The focus was thus on capacity development and making these services more available to the community.

Addressing the issue of court performance, Adv Jiyane pointed out that the major problems were the backlog of cases and the monitoring of performance. Generally the presentation highlighted that performance had improved in 2005 on the disposal of cases; all high courts experienced an increase in the number of new cases and the number of minimum sentences; the number of petitions for leave to appeal increased in the Supreme Court of Appeal, but the number of appeals placed on the roll decreased; and criminal courts continued to face many challenges with regard to serving the public and ensuring justice for all. Another important point raised was the need to narrow the gap between investigating officers and prosecutors. He called for a reciprocal relationship between the two. The court nerve centre was designated the task of monitoring, especially with regard to the Batho Pele principle. An important innovation was also highlighted. This was the Audiovisual Case Remand System, which would remove the lag in referencing and managing cases by making available an electronic medium.

The Chair thanked Adv Jiyane for his lengthy briefing and asked Mr N Mack (ANC, Western Cape) to pose his questions, which would be answered after lunch. Mr Mack felt it would be more apt to e-mail or fax these questions through to Court Services, as they were numerous.

The Chair accepted this proposal and the meeting was adjourned for lunch.