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GroundUp reports that a “bizarre” case in which a maintenance defaulter was found guilty and sentenced when charges were never put to him and he never pleaded has highlighted an embarrassing lack of training of magistrates in maintenance and family courts.
“Mistakes such as this have a potential to bring the judiciary into disrepute and can cause grave injustice to members of the public with serious repercussions to judicial officers,” Judge Takalani Ratshibvumo said in a review judgment in the Mbombela High Court. He set aside the conviction and sentencing of Samora Mashaba by an unnamed magistrate at the Nkomazi District Court in July this year and directed that the judgment be sent to the Chief Magistrate in the province “so that she is able to identify areas of need when it comes to training judicial officers, not limited to the one who presided over this case”. The matter came before the court as a special review, referred by the magistrate herself. The judge said a trial not preceded by a charge being put and the accused pleading was a “mistrial, a gross irregularity and a misdirection on the part of the presiding officer”. He added that the case “signifies the need to have well-trained and experienced magistrates in family and maintenance courts. For too long these courts have been neglected alongside the traffic courts, as courts where only the inexperienced magistrates would be allocated.”
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Tania Broughton at GroundUp
Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page