Zimpapers Logo

Munyaradzi Musiiwa Midlands Correspondent
HIGH Court judge Justice Lawrence Kamocha has lamented the shortage of judges in the southern part of the country, a situation he says has resulted in a backlog of 1,341 cases last year.

Justice Kamocha said the Bulawayo High Court and its circuit courts handled 4,761 cases last year and cleared 3,420 cases.

The Bulawayo High Court Judge, who was opening the 2015 Legal Year at Gweru High Court Circuit yesterday, attributed the delays in the completion of most cases to the shortage of judges manning courts in the southern part of the country.

“There is a very heavy workload for Bulawayo High Court which has a complement of five judges only. The five judges are supposed to handle criminal and civil cases from Bulawayo, Midlands, Matabeleland North and South Provinces”.

He said the staff challenge had resulted in the judges failing to conclude cases and taking longer than expected to reach verdicts on some of the cases.

“The five judges handle criminal and civil cases from all the four provinces. The judges also deal with all criminal and civil appeals from all magistrates’ courts in the four provinces, criminal and civil reviews, bail applications, cases transferred from the magistrates’ courts to the High Court for sentence, pre-trial conferences, contested court applications, urgent chamber applications, among other cases,” he said.

The judge’s remarks come at a time when Judge President Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku recently announced that six judges would soon be appointed to reduce the heavy workload on judges.

Justice Kamocha said the dire situation was being worsened by limited time allocated for circuit courts as well as unavailability of permanent courts.

He said the rate at which offences were committed did not match the rate of clearing them.

“Due to the above, it takes too long for cases to be set down for trial because of unavailability of a permanent court. By the time cases are set down for trial six to eight years later, the accused and witnesses would have moved to other areas while some would have died,” he said.

Justice Komacha said of the cases dealt by the Bulawayo High Court and its circuit courts last year, 155 were trial cases, of which 104 were finalised and 51 were pending.

There were 235 bail applications and of these 161 were finalised leaving 74 pending.

He said 2,404 criminal review files were received and 2,338 were processed, leaving a carry-over of 66.

“We had 1,967 criminal appeals filed and 817 have been dealt with leaving a balance of 1,150.”

Justice Komacha said the high court also dealt with 475 unopposed divorce applications.