Judiciary 'too white, too male'

2003-02-17 19:20

Cape Town - The chair of Parliament's justice committee, Johnny de Lange, called on Monday for the urgent transformation of the judiciary to better reflect South Africa's racial composition.

Speaking during debate on President Thabo Mbeki's state of the nation address, he said the judiciary had suffered from a "serious crisis of credibility, legitimacy and efficacy" because of its record under apartheid.

Perceptions of the judiciary and magistracy, particularly in the mostly black communities, were adversely affected.

Since 1994, the courts and legal system had been slowly "clawing its way out of the quagmire" that it was submerged in, with a slow increase in its levels of legitimacy and credibility.

"I can state unequivocally that the ANC takes this task very seriously," De Lange said.

Mbeki, who is also the president of the African National Congress, emphasised the need - in his speech to the ruling party's congress in December - to reform the judiciary.

De Lange said that historically the South African legal profession was overwhelmingly white and male, and did not reflect either the racial or gender composition of the country.

"This distortion in the legal profession has largely been responsible for this distortion on the Bench."

As the president had pointed out, part of the solution was the conscious and consistent building up of a pool of potential black and women candidates for appointment to the judiciary.

"A few mechanisms have been developed and utilised in this regard. However, such attempts in my view have been haphazard, arbitrary and unco-ordinated."

He said currently 66.1% of the 204 serving judges were white, 33.9% were black, while only 11.7% were female.

An analysis of all 1886 judicial officers, from both the judiciary and magistracy, showed 58.9% were white, 41% were black and 19.1% were female.

"Much still needs to be done to accelerate the transformation of the judiciary, and I urge this in all haste."

De Lange said there were some judicial officers in the country who were trying to promote an agenda that had little or nothing to do with the philosophies underpinning the Constitution.

"They hide behind the concept of the independence of the judiciary and legal obfuscation to promote their brand of justice, which more often than not harks back to a bygone constitutional and legal era, whose most abiding legacy is its declaration as a crime against humanity," he said.

- SAPA