‘SPECIAL CORRUPTION JUDGE TALL ORDER’

LOBAMBA – Despite that the fight against corruption is one of government’s priorities, establishing a separate court to deal with cases related to it is not ideal for the country.

This transpired during a sitting in the House of Assembly yesterday where Members of Parliament asked the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, Pholile Shakantu, to explore the possibility of establishing a separate court that will deal with corruption cases.

According to the minister, hiring a judge specifically for corruption cases would be costly due to the size of the country and that the only remedy that government had was dealing with the backlog of cases. The MPs informed the minister that most corruption-related cases were not concluded due to the fact that they dragged for too long-leading to witnesses disappearing or even worse, dying with all the evidence.

Dragging

The legislators said they were worried that government was seemingly not taking the issue of cases dragging seriously.
This, they said, was despite that a law was passed a few years ago, which provided that in the event a case took too long, a report was to be provided stating the reasons or the cases completely removed from the court roll.

Another argument by the MPs was that it was a known fact that there was a shortage of judges but that appointing one who will deal with corruption cases would save the country from corruption as offenders would be made to answer for their crimes. Ngwempisi MP, Mthandeni Dube, even suggested that government should consider the introduction of a block chain technology which he said was being used in many countries as a way of trying to eliminate corruption.

 “In countries like Uganda, they use this type of technology and are able to trace everything,” Dube said.
According to Wikipedia, a block chain is a decentralised, distributed and public digital ledger that is used to record transactions across many computers so that any involved record cannot be altered retroactively, without the alteration of all subsequent blocks.

Responding to the MPs, the minister admitted that when cases dragged for a long time, it affected the fight against corruption. She mentioned that it was important to add the number of judges and the places where they could do their job. She said one of the reasons why cases dragged was that lawyers had a tendency of postponing them.

“At times, the lawyers have to be changed yet the judge has already put the matter on the court roll for a certain date. This, to some extent, does contribute as it affects the work of the judges. Many times, the judge is forced to postpone the cases and when it is those related to corruption, it becomes a long process to make the changes and re-schedule,” the minister said.

The minister was also asked to explain what plans her ministry had to try and deal with the backlog of cases.
Her response was that in the absence of enough judges, the Constitution of Swaziland, 2005 allowed the chief justice to appoint some on an acting basis for a few months while waiting for the hiring process.

“We know that some people are not at all happy with this arrangement but we have no choice but to allow the courts to have ad hoc judges. That is the method the judiciary is looking into,” she said.

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