The justice department is developing an online system for the reporting of deceased estates, which is expected to come on stream in the current financial year, justice minister Ronald Lamola said in his budget vote speech in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
This initiative forms part of an overall drive to turnaround the Master’s Office and modernise, integrate and digitalise the justice system.
SA’s legal practitioners — disgruntled about the alleged corruption at the Master’s Offices and its huge backlogs — have complained in particular about the disarray in winding up deceased estates. The situation got worse during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Special Investigating Unit investigated corruption at the Master's Offices in 2020.
Lamola noted that an amount of R626m had been allocated for the integrated justice system project in the current financial year and a further R524.3m for the department’s modernisation projects.
An online reporting system for deceased estates would “drastically reduce queues and walk-in customers in the offices of the Masters or at the service points”, Lamola said. “The online deceased estates system will cut across the population as both rich and poor are affected by death. It is envisaged that the deceased estate online services will be implemented in the 2021/2022 year. “
An online service for the registration of trusts would also be introduced in 2021 to streamline the process and “assist in curbing fraud as applicants will be able to lodge their applications online. This will assist with the workload of the trust sections [of the Master’s Office] as most information will be captured and scanned in by the applicants.”
Through technology, the serving of court processes such as summons, which traditionally were served physically by the police and sheriffs, will now be served electronically.
“The integration of this technology across the justice system will also enable a real-time single view of individuals engaging with the justice system where, for example, an integrated system will indicate, at any given point, whether individuals have protection orders against their names or are applying for maintenance from different defendants at different courts, across the country,” Lamola said.
“We will ensure that justice services are accessible to citizens via digital platforms including maintenance services, protection orders and the expungement of criminal records services.”
Deputy justice minister John Jeffery said in his speech that an online maintenance application system was planned as the initial phase of establishing a comprehensive electronic management of maintenance matters.
“Currently magistrates courts receive thousands of manual applications for maintenance claims and at times the complainant is not aware what documentation is required — which then leads to them having to make multiple trips to the maintenance court. The new system seeks to ease the current cumbersome process by creating a web portal for the submission of maintenance application forms online. It will also enable the user to track how far the application is in the system,” Jeffery said.
“The portal will further inform the user of their next court appearance. This innovation will take us a step closer to our goal of using technology to simplify lengthy processes and continue to improve access to justice services for all. This solution will be piloted in our model court in Point, Durban, this year, before it is rolled-out to the other 450 maintenance courts.”
Jeffery noted that magistrates courts continued to grapple with “huge” case backlogs that were already high even before the national state of disaster was declared in March 2020. These backlogs increased during the hard lockdown.
From the records kept by the department, case backlogs stood at 53% and 48% in the regional courts and district courts respectively, immediately before the announcement of the level five lockdown in March 2020 and had decreased to 48.87% and 14.14% respectively by end-March 2021.
“We continue with the implementation of measures to bring down the backlogs. As part of the measures under way, the department has procured over 1,500 new laptops and the requisite data and IT equipment for use by magistrates. This yielded results as many cases, particularly civil matters, were dispensed with on virtual platforms during the hard lockdown. There were 37,572 matters where audiovisual remand was utilised as a virtual appearance method with the detainee in department of correctional services custody in 2020/2021.”
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