Justice minister Ronald Lamola has been urged by parliament’s justice committee to take up with his cabinet colleagues the nonpayment by other departments of the legal services provided by the state attorney’s office.
The 2021/2022 annual report for the justice department contains a R1.6bn impairment due to the long-outstanding balances owed by client departments for legal fees paid through the state attorney’s offices on their behalf.
The report says the balances have been impaired “after taking into account the payment history and financial situation of the client departments. The impairment also takes into account where there is a dispute which is a further indication of impairment.”
Justice committee chair Bulelani Magwanishe said President Cyril Ramaphosa could also raise the issue with members of his cabinet.
Justice department director-general Doctor Mashabane suggested in a departmental briefing on the annual report that his department take a tougher line on nonpaying departments. ACDP MP Steve Swart supported the stance, saying that in private practice attorneys require a deposit before taking on work.
“There is a possibility that we tell departments that we will not assist them to brief counsel if they have not given us a firm commitment that they have money available. Some of them are bankrupt because of medico-legal claims,” Mashabane said. Sometimes the departments disputed the invoices, but when the end of the financial year came they paid the very invoices they had previously disputed.
The director-general said the Treasury could perhaps ring-fence the legal budgets of departments so that those who do not budget for legal services will not have access to them. Another strategy would be to publish a “name and shame” list.
Mashabane said another problem is in meeting the Treasury’s demand that the department get three quotes for a legal brief. Lawyers by the nature of their work could not provide quotations. The department proposed a framework for dealing with this problem but the Treasury has not yet responded.
The nonpayment by the justice department for investigations undertaken by the Special Investigating Unit (SIU) was also raised by the committee. The department owes the SIU about R70m.
Mashabane said there has been a problem of invoicing by the SIU and significant progress has been made. The SIU’s services are not cheap and it is slow in submitting reports on investigations into the state attorney’s office and the master’s office, both of which are still outstanding after several years.
“As we make the payments there must be reciprocity in terms of the conclusion of the investigations,” he said. “If we have an open-ended investigation it is just not helping us” as the department could not act to address the problems in the entities investigated.
Like other departments such as the home affairs department the justice department is not satisfied with the work of the State Information Technology Agency (Sita), the centralised entity responsible for procuring government’s IT requirements. Mashabane said Sita is a serious constraint for the department. “It is a major challenge for us when it comes to [procurement] processes.” He said Lamola has asked communications minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni for the justice department to be exempt from Sita processes that are delaying the department’s rollout of an integrated justice system.
The chief master Martin Mafojane said he hopes the backlog at the master’s offices will be cleared by end-December though this depends on load-shedding and the stability of the IT system. By end-September 421 (4.27%) of the backlog of 9,856 cases had been dealt with.
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