Chief Justice Raymond Zondo has condemned former president Jacob Zuma and tourism minister Lindiwe Sisulu for the pair's respective defiance and attacks on the SA judiciary, which led to the 2021 civil unrest and compromised the personal security of Constitutional Court judges.
“These attacks are from people who want judges to decide certain cases in a certain way or who are upset that the judge decided in a case in one or another way,” Zondo said during a presentation of the judiciary’s annual report for 2021/2022.
“The judiciary … will not be intimated by anybody no matter his or her standing in society.”
Zondo on Friday said Zuma did the “unthinkable” when the former president defied the apex court by failing to adhere to a summons by the state capture commission of inquiry, which was headed by Zondo, to testify before it.
The judgment by the Constitutional Court sparked weeklong violent protests that erupted in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng in July 2021, which saw shopping malls and other businesses looted or burnt down and which left 342 people dead.
During the unrest judges were attacked, demeaned and threatened and intimidated, Zondo said.
“This became so bad that the constitutional court judges had to be given special protection. All this because sought to play their role provided for in the constitution.”
The chief justice repeated his criticism of Sisulu, who in 2022 opinion article published in Independent Media publications earlier in January in which she described black judges as “mentally colonised”, drawing sharp criticism from civil society and politician.
Sisulu later apologised and retracted her statements.
“While the judiciary will not always respond to every criticism it reserves the right to draw the line and respond publicly and decisively to attacks on it,” Zondo said.
Meanwhile, the judiciary’s latest annual report shows that the majority of the country’s superior courts including the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Labour Appeals Court achieved their targets of hearing and finalising cases despite the lack of infrastructure maintenance at the courts and load-shedding.
The Constitutional Court and Supreme Court of Appeal achieved between 70% and 80% of their annual targets while the Land Claims Court only 49% of its targets against the set annual target of 60%.
“Covid-19 negatively affected the court’s ability to physically travel to adjudicate land claims trials, which could not be heard virtually. The absence of a generator until November 2022 meant that cases could not be heard during the frequent bouts of load-shedding,” he said.
Zondo highlighted the high backlog of cases in the finalisation of criminal cases. The number of outstanding criminal cases in the country is up 5% from 870.
“The various divisions of the High Court had fixed 30% as their target to which they would reduce backlogs; however, collectively they fail to achieve this target and managed only 49%,” Zondo said.
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