The Constitutional Court’s decision to stop using the services of retired justices will go a long way in strengthening the public trust that the judiciary, especially the country’s apex court, should be enjoying.
The Office of the Chief Justice has been under the spotlight since it emerged that it had asked retired justices including the controversial Zak Yacoob to help “clear the backlog” by “reading new applications and preparing a draft memorandum in respect of each new application referred to him”.
Yacoob’s suitability for this role was bound to raise a lot of questions, and it did. This is because of his controversial political views, verbal attack on a journalist while he was the board chairperson of Cricket South Africa and his alleged proximity to some Cabinet ministers.
That the information about his new role had to be dragged out of the Office of the Chief Justice only made matters worse. It did not read well for transparency and accountability, which are the strong foundation upon which the robust Constitution of this country was built, and no one knows this better than the Office of the Chief Justice.
In reasoning why the programme had now been abandoned, the Office of the Chief Justice claimed that retired justices were unavailable. Some may argue that surely this could have been avoided by first checking with the retired justices.
Nonetheless, given the unavailability of many of the retired justices, the Office of the Chief Justice says it was clear that the programme would not be able to operate in the manner in which it had been contemplated.
“When introduced, the idea was that the rendering of this support service would be rotated among most, if not all, of the retired justices of the Constitutional Court. It was never contemplated that it would be the same retired justices who would render this support service all the time.”
Be that as it may, the active role of the civic organisations in mounting pressure should not be overlooked. If it was not for this public pressure, the Office of the Chief Justice would have probably stood by its decision.
In fact, Yacoob’s newfound role would have never seen the light of day. That scenario would have further eroded the public’s trust in the judiciary.
Cape Times