Africa-Press – South-Africa. Deputy Judge President of the Gauteng High Court Judge Roland Sutherland says many things are “not optimal” at the court in Johannesburg, but that it is at the mercy of the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) and the Department of Public Works.
In a notice on Friday, Sutherland announced that effective immediately, the default mode for hearing all matters would be by video link because there was no backup for load shedding in the building.
He was blunt in saying the two departments were at fault.
“Regrettably, it has become necessary to issue new directives concerning holding physical and video-link hearings.”
He said this was the result of Eskom load shedding at the court building and “the failure of the OCJ and the Department of Public Works to provide the court with a reliable generator, which could cover the periods of outages”.
“On behalf of the Judiciary and the Registry staff, I offer an apology for the grossly inadequate service being made available to the litigating public. I appeal to the profession to endure the disruption and inconvenience with patience.”
Sutherland told News24 on Friday the court’s generator did not work properly and called Stage 6 load shedding a “disaster” for the court.
He said:
He said their current load shedding schedule was noon to 16:00, which meant they lost three of the four-and-a-half court hours a day.
“The matters that can’t be done after noon will have to be done out of court and out of the CBD (where the court is situated, as the area experiences load shedding at that time). The biggest disaster is for the criminal courts; they are left crippled.”
These matters, Sutherland said, would have to get an early start, but the courts were reliant on the transport of prisoners. According to him, it is usually for an hour when their current generator does work.
But it overheats and then fails.
“Last night (Thursday), we had an urgent sitting which had to be abandoned.”
On Thursday, load shedding also interrupted a civil case in which advocate Dali Mpofu was involved. He was arguing in President Cyril Ramaphosa and his predecessor Jacob Zuma’s interim interdict case when the lights went out.
Sutherland said until the court could get a reliable alternative power source, judges would have to work from home and would need to leave court early or face walking down 12 flights of stairs in the dark.
He said:
He said the only other option was to ask Eskom and City Power to add the court to the exempt essential services list.
“But if everyone with a good reason to be exempt was released from load shedding, then there would be no areas left to load shed.”
He said at this point, the court just had to keep begging the entities for a generator. And it was not just the generator that was packing up.
“We had an issue with the recording devices and had to have a scrambled emergency repair one weekend. There are lots of things that are not optimal [at the court].”
The OCJ and the Department of Public Works for comment. This will be added once they respond.
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