Chairperson, I would like to thank the hon Makhubela for posing a question which is going to allow me to give quite a lengthy reply on the work done by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development. I wish to advise the hon member that the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development has made considerable progress in establishing an accessible and affordable court system that allows ordinary people, who have been removed from the major urban areas, to access justice quickly and easily.
The current court system is based on the 366 magisterial districts which are largely based on the pre-1994 court system in terms of which better resourced and well-equipped courts were established in cities and affluent areas. Rural areas and former black townships were served by underresourced and poorly equipped branch courts. The following are the programmes undertaken by the department to address this legacy of the apartheid court system: Firstly, we want the rationalisation and redemarcation of the magisterial districts to be consistent with our current constitutional dispensation. This programme seeks to rationalise and align magisterial districts to be consistent with the provincial and municipal dispensation.
The outcome of this exercise is to ensure that there is at least one magistrate's court for every municipality. For bigger municipalities, two or more seats of the magistrate's court will be established. Every magistrate's court and every seat of a magistrate in each of the 287 municipal areas will be adequately resourced and capacitated to meet the needs of communities.
Preliminary consultations within the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security cluster have taken place and recommendations have been drafted, which will be published soon for public comments. Thereafter, the Minister will proclaim the new rationalised areas of jurisdiction of the magistrates' courts. As part of this programme, the department continues to build new courts in municipalities and rural villages that had none previously. The department will also upgrade the existing infrastructure in some of these areas.
Courts that have been recently completed in rural areas include Ekangala Magistrate's Court, while the construction of new courts in Ntuzuma and Katlehong is under way.
Secondly, we want to upgrade current branch courts to full service courts. Branch courts were mainly designed to provide criminal trials only and for civil and family law services, the communities had to travel long distances to main courts in remote cities and towns.
To address this anomaly, the department has embarked on a programme to upgrade branch courts to turn them into full service courts to provide all services, including civil and family law services to local communities.
There are 15 branch courts which were converted into proper courts in August 2009. In the interests of time, I am not going to read all of them, but the details are there in the written response. Similarly, the nine branch courts which will be converted in the 2010-12 financial years are listed in the written reply.
Thirdly, the conversion of the 15 branch courts in rural areas and former black townships during August 2009, and the planned conversion of nine branch courts during the 2010-11 financial year remains the most important milestone in our quest to enhance access to justice in rural villages and townships. The effect thereof is phenomenal. The population served by these courts is estimated at six million cumulatively.
Before 11 August 2009, these six million people had to commute to the main courts in remote cities and towns at huge costs, because prior to the conversion of these branch courts, only limited criminal trials were rendered at those courts. The infrastructure of these courts has been upgraded and human resource capacity increased to capacitate these courts to render full services including civil cases, maintenance, domestic violence, etc. The capacity of these courts has also been increased to include small claims courts and the services of the Master.
Fourthly, the department has also introduced the Traditional Courts Bill which is currently before Parliament. This Bill emanated from the policy framework on the traditional justice system under the Constitution, developed by the department. The Traditional Courts Bill aims to bring about a single statute regulating the role and functions of traditional leaders in the administration of justice. The main objective of this Bill as set out in clause 2 is to, firstly, affirm the values of the traditional justice system. [Time expired.] Thank you very much; and I thank the hon Makhubela as well.