Question NW924 to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services

Reply:

(1)(a) From August 2013 up to 7 February 2020, the Department upgraded 106 courts into sexual offences courts in line with the MATTSO[1] Sexual Offences Courts (SOC) Model. Pursuant to the promulgation of section 55A of the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Amendment Act, 2007 (Act No 32 of 2007) (the Act), these courts are now referred to as the MATTSO courts.

On 7 February 2020, section 55A of the Act was promulgated into law to introduce the statutory sexual offences courts that must be established and resourced in line with the Regulations relating to Sexual Offences Courts. The Department is in the process of converting the MATTSO courts into the section 55A sexual offences courts. However, this does mean that the MATTSO courts ceased to function, as section 55A (5) of the Act empowers the MATTSO courts and the rest of the courts for the regional divisions to deal with sexual offences matters, even though they are not established as the sexual offences courts yet.

On 30 March 2022, the Minister received a letter of concurrence from the Acting Chief Justice to designate courts where the section 55A sexual offences courts must be established. With this progress at hand, it is therefore anticipated that the first batch of these courts will be released in the next financial year (2022/23).

(b) As indicated in paragraph (1)(a) above, at present only the MATTSO courts are prioritising the adjudication sexual offences matters until the establishment of the section 55A sexual offences courts. The Department is unable to provide the exact number of magistrates dedicated to the MATTSO courts, as the allocation of such presiding magistrates falls under the purview of the administrative functions of the head of each regional division (referred to as the Regional Court President). In seeking to formalise the execution of this judicial function per regional division, section 55A (7) of the Act requires the head of each regional division to issue directives with the purpose of ensuring that sexual offences matters receive priority at each sexual offences court. It is therefore expected that the Regional Court Presidents will issue these directives upon the establishment of the section 55A sexual offences courts planned for the 2022/23 financial year.

(2) During the period 1 April 2021 to 28 February 2022, the 106 MATTSO courts registered the following cases according to the following metrics:

Reply to Question (2)(a)	Reply to Question (2)(b)(ii)
Province	No. of MATTSO Courts	Total No. of new cases registered	Total No. Pending cases
Eastern Cape	6	151	327
Free State	9	403	593
Gauteng	21	695	810
KwaZulu-Natal	12	425	700
Limpopo	10	142	333
Mpumalanga	7	246	507
Northern Cape	12	150	274
North West	14	161	506
Western Cape	15	349	936
TOTAL	106	2 722	4 986

(2)(b)(i) During the period 1 April 2021 to 28 February 2022, the NPA reported cases of sexual offences finalised with conviction as follows:

	Total No of cases finalised with a verdict	Total No of Cases finalised with a Conviction	Percentage of Conviction
All provinces	4 040	3 008	74.5%
Courts attached to the 55 TCCs	1 190	910	76.5%

3. The Department is currently not collecting statistics according to the types of sentence imposed on convicted sex offenders, and this includes sentences imposed in terms of the minimum sentencing legislation referred to as the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1997 (Act 105 of 1997). However, the correction of this matter is already receiving attention. In January 2022, the Department established a Task Team constituted by statisticians, gender-based violence and femicide (GBVF) specialists and the system developers drawn from DoJ&CD, NPA, Legal Aid South Africa, the Integrated Justice System (IJS) and the judiciary to address gaps in the current data metrics of the Integrated Case Management System (ICMS): Criminal and to align this data repository to the new changes introduced by the recent 3 GBV Amendment Acts of 2021. The upgrading of the ICMS: Criminal will unfold in a phase-in approach which gives priority to the inclusion of the additional data metrics on sentencing, as part of Phase 1. The latter Phase is expected to be finalised in 2022/23 financial year.

While the Department’s ICMS upgrade is in progress, the NPA is collecting statistics on the imprisonment sentences imposed on convicted sex offenders, but in a limited scale. During the period 1 April 2021 to 28 February 2022, the NPA reported that the 55 Thuthuzela Care Centres (TCCs) recorded the following breakdown of sentences imposed exclusively on convicted rape offenders:

Offence	Type of Sentence	Number
RAPE	Life imprisonment	173
	20-25 years imprisonment	89
	10-19 years imprisonment	338

Please note that these statistics do not give the complete performance of all courts in the country, as it is limited only to those courts that are linked to the 55 TCCs.

1. Ministerial Advisory Task Team on the Adjudication of Sexual Offences Matters ↑