Sharp rise in complaints against judges, says chief justice

There has been a “tremendous increase” in the number of complaints against judges over the past three years, with 132 received in 2024/25 alone, according to chief justice Mandisa Maya.

She was deeply concerned about reports that public confidence in the judiciary had waned.

As head of the judiciary, Maya on Wednesday addressed a gathering to mark the release of the 2023/24 and 2024/25 annual reports of the judiciary, which focus on the achievements, performance indicators and challenges facing its different divisions.

In 2022/23 there were 93 complaints against judges, and 125 complaints were received in 2023/24, bringing the total number of complaints over three years to 350. Not all the complaints were resolved in the financial year they were received and had to be carried over to the following year.

Questioned as to the nature of these complaints, Maya said they related to delays in the handing down of judgments, disgruntlement about adverse judgments delivered against the complainants, and alleged misconduct. Judicial officers were also sometimes accused of incompetence.

The judicial conduct committee of the Judicial Services Commission deals with these complaints. A high-profile one dealt with recently by the judicial conduct tribunal was the sexual harassment allegations brought against Eastern Cape judge Selby Mbenenge.

The chief justice said a sexual harassment policy was being implemented throughout the judiciary. Sexual harassment would not be tolerated, she stressed.

Maya said the delay in dealing with the complaints could be partly attributed to the challenges faced by the judicial conduct committee in its composition. Efforts had been made to increase the number of judges serving on the committee from the current five by proposing an amendment to the Judicial Service Commission Act. There was also a lack of administrative resources which contributed to the delay in dealing with complaints, she added.

“The influx of complaints received against acting judges has only aggravated the situation, as the judicial conduct committee lacks jurisdiction over acting judges once they have finished their acting stints and go back to practice.”

The complaints processes were also not immune from legal challenges, which negatively affected the speed at which complaints were finalised.

In her speech on the annual reports, Maya addressed the non-performance of the Constitutional Court in dealing with reserved judgments. As of November 1, 13 judgments had been reserved for longer than six months, five of them from 2024.

To address capacity constraints at the court she said approval had been given for six experienced lawyers to be employed by the court from April 1 2026 to assist in sifting through the applications to the court, many of which lacked merit.

Maya said this system was used in other countries.

A constitutional amendment was also in the offing to allow the court to use smaller panels of judges for less complex cases.

Maya said the main reason for the Constitutional Court not meeting its target with regard to the processing of reserved judgments was that there was a heavy flow of high-profile, complex and urgent matters which fell within its exclusive jurisdiction.

“These cases demand the intense attention of all the justices. The matters enrolled in the court typically involve extensive records, including numerous sets of pleadings and written submissions, and a multitude of parties, resulting in a substantially greater volume of reading and preparation compared to other courts,” Maya noted.

Preparing judgments required extensive research and reflection.

Steps were under way to strengthen the institutional and financial independence of the judiciary. Maya said it had been agreed that some administrative functions would be transferred from the department of justice to the office of the chief justice in two phases from April 1 2026.

A draft cabinet memorandum and draft bill had been prepared to operationalise institutional independence and to create a unified judiciary incorporating magistrate’s courts.

Questioned about the delays in Gauteng courts, judge president of the division Dunstan Mlambo noted that the South African Law Reform Commission was in the process of finalising the Mediation Bill to address the heavy caseloads at courts.

Mlambo introduced mediation as a mechanism to ease the burden on the courts, which has led to trial dates extending to the early 2030s. He said there had been an explosion in the number of cases, which had not been matched by an increase in the number of judges.

Mlambo said there were now no longer any trial dates beyond 2029.