Budget Vote Hearings

Meeting report

Master’s Office of the High Court
Adv Menzi Simelane, Director General and acting Chief Master of the High Court: Department of Justice, briefed the Committee on Operation Islondo that focused on strengthening the child maintenance system. The department was trying to make the process of applying for maintenance an easy one. The tracing of defaulters was one of the challenges. However, some success had been recorded as service providers had been engaged to assist as tracing agents. Also, beneficiaries who had not come forward to receive their payments were being traced.

Their aim was to enable the public to apply for maintenance easily at any Master’s Office. People could apply by filling in the forms and dropping them off at the court or posting them. These forms were currently being translated into the eleven official languages of South Africa and were now available in English and Afrikaans. In addition these forms were also available on the internet.  The process of accessing the service on the internet was not an easy one. To solve this, they would provide a trained person to assist the applicant in filling these forms on the internet.

The tracing of defaulters was another challenge. It was critical to find the person who must pay for that particular child. Sometimes a father had doubts about the paternity of the child for whom he must pay. The issue of tracing people had now become easy, since they had introduced the ITC system similar to the one that was used by credit bureaus to trace people. The results were very positive as they had traced many people already. Through the new ITC system they also traced missing beneficiaries to collect the maintenance that had been secured for them. These were beneficiaries who had moved since their application and given up trying to obtain maintenance.

Another challenge was the hearing of maintenance cases themselves. This problem would be resolved when the Jurisdiction of Regional Courts Bill was passed. He condemned the fact that family courts had been clustered in such a way that people had to travel a long way to access them. By decentralizing the courts, the distance that people had to travel would be shortened.

It was necessary to make certain interventions to ensure that people who could pay maintenance, did so. He made reference to other countries where defaulters were deprived of certain public services until they had paid their maintenance. For example, a defaulter cannot register a business or get tax clearance or renew their car licence.

Addressing the problem of vacancies, Adv Simelane said that a programme had been formulated to determine the level of work being done and the number of vacancies that needed to be filled in the Master’s Offices. Since January 2008, 649 people had been employed in the Offices of the Master. A lot of emphasis was being placed on training and recruiting the right candidates. All the Master’s Offices, except Pretoria, had their processes running electronically. Also, to eliminate the incidence of cheque fraud, payments were being made directly into the accounts of beneficiaries. The modernisation of processes by the use of information technology was an ongoing strategy which, in addition to the use of service providers, had greatly improved the level of service delivery.

Office of the Chief Litigation Officer
Adv Lindiwe Vilakazi, the Chief Litigation Officer, in her briefing, outlined some of the challenges being faced by the Litigation Unit. These included poor image for this branch of the Department which emanated from a lack of resources, skills, poor case management and poor public relations. Other challenges include weak relationship management, lack of professionalism and an increasingly litigious society.

Some of the steps being taken to address these challenges included efforts at building capacity within the unit. A skills audit and development plan was to be rolled out while an additional allocation of R5 million was made available for the 2007/08 financial year. Additional professional and administrative posts have been recommended while new candidate attorneys, legal secretaries and legal assistants were to be appointed as additional capacity under the Legal Interns Programme.

Other efforts at addressing the challenges included the development of a State Litigation Blueprint to provide for efficient management of litigation, and strengthening of stakeholder management. In this regard, a National State Litigation Management conference was to be held annually, and service level agreements between state attorneys and client departments had been concluded.

The Unit’s litigation costs per department and per province were provided for the 2006/07 financial year. Of a total of R270 million, the Eastern Cape spending of R52.7million was the highest. Of that R30 million was expended on Social Development cases alone. There were no statistics for the Northern Cape office as it was still new.

On presidential pardons, Adv Vilakazi stated that a special dispensation for pardoning of persons convicted for offences allegedly committed in pursuit of political objectives was established by the President.  A multiparty Reference Group was formed to consider applications for pardon and to make recommendations to the President on these. To date 940 applications had been received and were being processed. The activities of the Reference Group were being supported financially and administratively by the DOJ.

The Reference Group made proposals to the President for a revision of their terms of reference. The proposals were that the disqualification of persons denied amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be removed; and that a provision should be made to accommodate people who were still on trial as well as those who had committed politically motivated deeds and had not yet been charged. It was resolved that legal opinion be sought on these proposals, and the issue of disqualification of those denied amnesty be referred to Parliament.

Discussion
Mr Z Ntuli (ANC) asked why the line managers in the Master’s Offices did not make requisitions for vacant posts existing within their jurisdictions.

Mr J Le Roux (DA) noted that the audit report on the Guardians Fund was negative and wondered whether there was adequate capacity for training of relevant personnel.

Ms F Nyanda (ANC) asked why there was no Master’s Office in Mpumalanga.

The Chair asked why it was only lawyers that dealt with applications for foster care.

In his response, Mr Simelane stated that there was inadequate office space for the maintenance offices. On vacant posts, he stated that line managers were required to report to him about new posts or staff that were needed. Due to budget constraints, they had to prioritise their activities. He noted that the Department did not deal with issues of foster care and child grants. This was part of the functions of Social Development. He explained that they only dealt with applications for foster care because only lawyers had the right of appearance before the High Courts.

Mr A Manyosi (ANC) said that there were allegations that the government lost many cases because it employed lawyers who had failed in private practice. He asked if these allegations were correct. Also, why were cases being allocated to preferred private attorneys instead of efficient ones. He asked whether closing down the Umtata office was the best remedy for dealing with the problem of mismanagement. Further, he asked whether political pardons were being granted to persons who committed offences before or after 1994.

Mr Ntuli asked if the additional recommended posts were funded. Also, he asked why the DOJ should be financially responsible for the Reference Group when it was clearly a political initiative.

Ms Nyanda asked whether imbizos were being held to inform the people in the rural areas about the activities of the Litigation Unit.

The Chair asked what measures were being taken to address the problem of lack of professionalism. How much engagement was there with the Public Service Commission to address the problem. What was being done about the departments responsible for the high litigation costs? He asked what the percentage was for work that was outsourced and how much the unit was paying for this. Finally, was the shifting of funds from one programme to another permissible?

The rest of the meeting was not monitored.




Adv Simelane’s response to the issue of the lack of office space was that they were trying to avoid using mobile units and they could not afford to rent office space as it was not going to be efficient to do so. They had not given up yet and would continue to seek suitable offices. He also justified the fact that some offices were moved due to the management not being competent enough. The functions of the Master’s Offices were to control the administration of deceased estates, trusts, the Guardian's Fund, curatorships and insolvent estates and liquidations. Some of the Master’s Offices did not offer all these services. What they were trying to ensure was that all the Offices offered these services. In trying to solve the issue of the lack space they interacted with the Department of Public Works to identify vacant buildings. This was easier when it came to big cities like Cape Town as opposed to small towns like Umtata.

His answer to the child grant question was that the Master’s Offices did not deal with such matters. They could only refer a person to the Department of Social Development or assist in telling the person what to bring in terms of the required documents. On the matter of maintenance and the child support grant, he said a child either get one or the other. With foster care, a person needed an attorney because the documents had to be in order when they were brought to the court.

He also addressed the issue of establishment and said that it was national office that decided what posts to create and where. That matter was centralized because they had to take budget constraints into account. He made these decisions. He was currently creating additional interpreter posts. He also mentioned some of responsibilities that the regional courts could take on. The national office was doing the jobs which could had been done regionally, so they were trying to ease this by delegating jobs to the regional offices. He gave the example of the fixing of fax machines.

He said the Master’s Office had the following posts: Master of the High Court, Deputy Master Assistant Master and Estate Controller. The training of people was in good hands according to Adv Simelane. They were sending people to Witwatersrand University for training as this university offered this program. About 20 people were currently being trained.

Mr Ntuli repeated his question wanting to know where did people apply for foster care.

Adv Simelane said that he would double check but he thought people applied at the Department of Social Development. The filling in of forms was done there. But when they came to court, both parents must be there or the foster parents accompanied by a lawyer and all the documents should be available.

A further question was why was it necessary that a lawyer had to assist people with this.
 
Adv Simelane replied that it was because filling in these forms was not easy. They needed assistance. However, he said they would look at other means of making it easier.

In answering Mr Manyosi’s question about how to calculate the contribution that each parent should make for the child, Adv Simelane said that in many cases it was usually the parent staying with the child that contributed more than other. They were trying to balance this so both parents did contribute.

A question that arose out of this was why was the result of the paternity test not 100% certain when they tested someone.

Adv Simelane responded that he had never seen a situation where it was 100%, normally was 99,2%. The chance of the man not being a father was 0.8% and legally that was sound.

Meeting adjourned.