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Today, Parliament's portfolio committee on justice will be reviewing the department's annual report. Unfortunately, this report reveals a department that is riddled with overall mismanagement and a lack of accountability, negatively affecting the delivery of justice to all, and vulnerable groups in particular. Justice Minister Jeff Radebe has, to his credit, acknowledged the lack of financial management and corruption in his department, but has failed to acknowledge the extent of the overall mismanagement .

Several areas of serious concern include:

Lack of protection of women and children

It is abundantly clear that the Department is failing in its duty towards women and children. This can be seen from the figures in several areas:

• Maintenance: in 67% of maintenance applications, no relief was granted in 2009/10. 200 786 new maintenance applications were received in the last financial year, and in only 65 476 cases were orders made or warrants issued. This means that for some 135 310 maintenance applications (67.4%), no relief was granted. This prejudices predominantly women, who are deprived of the means with which to support themselves and/or their children. Unfortunately, it is the poorest who suffer most.
• Sexual Offences: the number of outstanding cases for the age group 14-17, has increased by 4193% and in respect of the 18 years and over category, the number of outstanding cases has increased by 4231% in the last three years - from 43 cases in 2006, to 1803 in 2009 and from 311 in 2006, to 13160 in 2009 respectively.
• Victim Empowerment Programme (VEP) and Victim's Charter: despite the VEP being formally launched in 1998, the 2009/10 Annual Report states as one of its KPI's, "the department aims to develop a policy to guide the implementation of victim empowerment programmes". Surely this belongs in an Annual Report from 10 years ago?
• Domestic Violence: Of the total 291 546 applications, orders were made in 141 159 cases, thus, in respect 52% of cases, no relief was granted.

Lack of adequate functioning of the courts

Justice delayed, is justice denied, and most concerning is the fact that:

• the criminal courts sit for an average of a mere 03:46 hours per day
• the regional courts finalise an average only 0.6 cases per court per day
• the district courts finalise less than 3 cases per court per day
• Equality Courts have a 72% rate of pending cases
• The Supreme Courts of Appeals has a 81% rate of outstanding cases for criminal appeals and 91% for civil appeals
• there are 1040 vacancies in court services, and 766 in administration.
• There are 43 senior management vacancies, 255 in the category "highly skilled - supervision", 49 judges and 294 magistrates.

Management Issues

There are a number of references in the Annual Report which clearly indicate that the department has employed people without the requisite skills to do the job, with "less experienced officials are taking up posts at a high rate", and "quality skills are required", which "take time to develop". The DoJ admits that "one of the identified problems that caused a delay in the finalising of grievances is the lack of trained and skilled managers" (resulting in 281 disciplinary cases and 189 grievances outstanding for 2009/10).

It is thus clear that there are more problems in the Department of Justice than corruption and financial mismanagement. Today, I will be raising the following matters with the Portfolio Committee on Justice, so that the Department can be called to account for the following:

1. Filling all vacancies as a matter of urgency.
2. Ensuring that staff who are not able to do the work required are properly trained or dismissed.
3. Addressing the maintenance court, sexual offences and domestic violence backlogs.
4. Urgently addressing the proper implementation of the Victim Empowerment Programme.