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Responding to the State Legal Services Policy Framework, (as distinguished from the Legal Practice Bill) released by the Justice Minister Jeff Radebe today, the Democratic Alliance (DA) cautiously welcomes the fact that attention is being given to reforming the State legal services.

State legal services have been in a chaotic state for some time. In many cases litigants against the state wait for years before their claims reach finalisation, by which time they are often deceased or bankrupt.

The DA also welcomes the plan to ensure that state legal work is more equitably distributed to the private sector. It has been historically difficult for women and black legal practitioners to secure briefs in the larger and more complicated legal matters due to historic discrimination and the false perception that, unless you belong to a large firm, you are not a good lawyer. It is obviously necessary, however, to ensure that the practitioners possess the requisite expertise to perform the work in a satisfactory manner.

We are, however, concerned that the Minister is once again trying to address issues by means of legislation and policy documents, when the real issue is the failure of management resulting from weak political leadership.

The problems in State legal Services mentioned by the Minister, such as prescription of claims involving government, default judgments being granted against the state, insufficient preparation, failure to settle matters and lack of monitoring systems are management issues, and will not be solved by a policy framework.

The only way these issues will be solved is by appointing competent managers in the State Attorney’s office, who are held accountable by the political leadership. The Minister fails to explain why this has not been done to date.

We shall be studying the policy framework in greater detail and will comment further if necessary.