{"id":93472,"date":"2025-11-25T19:50:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:50:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases"},"modified":"2025-11-25T19:53:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T19:53:58","slug":"sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases","title":{"rendered":"SA Courts Struggling to Finalize Criminal Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #ff6600\"><strong>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. <\/strong><\/span>South African courts have struggled to finalise criminal matters, with recent judiciary reports showing failure to meet targets.<\/p>\n<p>Chief Justice Mandisa Maya delivered annual judiciary reports for the 2023\/2024 and 2024\/2025 financial years.<\/p>\n<p>The report gives an overview of the performance of the judiciary and highlights problem areas.<\/p>\n<p>In the last financial year, only 73% of criminal cases were finalised, just under the 75% target.<\/p>\n<p>Maya has attributed this to the conduct of some accused and their legal representatives, leading to several postponements<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The national target for the reduction of criminal backlogs and finalisation of criminal matters at the high court was not met. Some of the reported reasons being that cases involved multiple accused, trials were lengthy, and matters were complex.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><strong>For More News And Analysis About <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">South-Africa<\/span> Follow <span style=\"color: #ff6600\">Africa-Press<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Africa-Press &#8211; South-Africa. South African courts have struggled to finalise criminal matters, with recent judiciary reports showing failure to meet targets. Chief Justice Mandisa Maya delivered annual judiciary reports for the 2023\/2024 and 2024\/2025 financial years. The report gives an overview of the performance of the judiciary and highlights problem areas. In the last financial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":93470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12],"tags":[275],"class_list":["post-93472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-news","category-policy","tag-south-africa-2"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.1 (Yoast SEO v27.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>SA Courts Struggling to Finalize Criminal Cases - South Africa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"South African courts have struggled to finalise criminal matters, with recent judiciary reports showing failure to meet ...\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"SA Courts Struggling to Finalize Criminal Cases\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"South African courts have struggled to finalise criminal matters, with recent judiciary reports showing failure to meet ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"South Africa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/AfricaPressTunisiaa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-11-25T19:50:43+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-11-25T19:53:58+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2025\/11\/sm_1764087794.723446.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"630\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"cfeditoren\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"cfeditoren\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/#\/schema\/person\/068c7ab4e9634ae78ec5d54ec46598bb\"},\"headline\":\"SA Courts Struggling to Finalize Criminal Cases\",\"datePublished\":\"2025-11-25T19:50:43+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2025-11-25T19:53:58+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\"},\"wordCount\":137,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/static.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/sites\/31\/2025\/11\/sm_1764087794.723446.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"South-Africa\"],\"articleSection\":[\"all news\",\"policy\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.africa-press.net\/south-africa\/all-news\/sa-courts-struggling-to-finalize-criminal-cases\",\"name\":\"SA Courts Struggling to Finalize Criminal Cases - 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