Cape Town — Chief Justice, Raymond Zondo, believes load shedding has had a detrimental effect on the efficiency of the judiciary, but says there’s not much the head judges can do.
Zondo was speaking at a three-day judges’ conference in Sun City, North West, this past week.
The issue of power outages was raised and Zondo said it was one of the contributing factors that had delayed the execution of justice in a timely manner, EWN reported.
Zondo said his offices noted the delays in court because of the lack of electricity.
“The problem of load shedding has been there for a very long time. [It] seems to take a very long time to resolve and is very disruptive to the operations of the court. We depend, really, on the executive to do what needs to be done,” Zondo said.
“For four years I called for everybody who has evidence that the judiciary in SA is captured… up to now nobody has come with evidence. The accusations are made by those who wish to ensure that the judiciary is not trusted.” – Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. pic.twitter.com/cD4Ft5yM3T
— Newzroom Afrika (@Newzroom405) December 5, 2023
He also shot down any accusations of any judiciary capture, saying that for the past four years, he had called for evidence but none had come to light yet. The State Security Agency distanced itself from the “so-called intelligence report”.
Zondo, a no stranger to systematic capture of institutions as he headed the inquiry into state capture for four years, believed accusations of capture in the judiciary were not true, according to TimesLIVE.
“We have been accused of being captured, but it is an accusation that we reject with the contempt it deserves. For four years, I called for everybody who has evidence that the judiciary in SA is captured to come forward, and nobody came with any evidence,” he said.
He added that there was no proof that South Africans had no trust in the judiciary and that one of the ways the justice department has worked to avoid the influence of judges was by handling and funding necessary educational training of judges in-house.
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Compiled by Matthew Petersen
