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NewsDay

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Better-staffed Supreme Court clears backlog

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The increased number of judges has enabled Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to allocate work to the nine judges in such a way that the court is now sitting from Mondays to Fridays.

THE increase in the number of Supreme Court judges of appeal and the restructuring of the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court has seen the court operating at full strength resulting in the completion of 114 appeal cases since the beginning of this year. CHARLES LAITON, SENIOR COURT REPORTER

The increased number of judges has enabled Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku to allocate work to the nine judges in such a way that the court is now sitting from Mondays to Fridays as opposed to sitting three days per week in the past.

The court is comprised of the following judges of appeal; Chief Justice Chidyausiku, his deputy Justice Luke Malaba, Justices, Paddington Garwe, Vernanda Ziyambi, Anne-Mary Gowora, Bharat Patel, Elizabeth Gwaunza, Antonia Guvava and Ben Hlatshwayo.

Responding to questions by NewsDay last week over the marked improvement in the Supreme and Constitutional Court operations, Judiciary Service Commission (JSC) said it was the commissions’ objective to ensure that justice was delivered on time to the people of Zimbabwe.

Last year, JSC introduced the office of the Chief Registrar, in charge of all the superior courts, headed by former regional magistrate, Walter Chikwanha.

“At the beginning of the year, we had cases going as way back as 2006. Now most of the appeals that we are setting down were filed with the Supreme Court in 2011, 2012 and 2013,” Chikwanha said.

“A total of 248 appeals were filed during the course of the year. To date there are 119 pending matters, meaning that the backlog has been reduced by 114 cases.”

“It is our wish to ensure that appeals are not used as a time buying tactic by litigants who would have lost in the lower courts, but are recourse to the superior court of justice.”

The JSC further said the Chief registrar’s office, acting in collaboration with registrars of the High and Labour Courts had put in place mechanisms to ensure that records of appeal to the Supreme Court were not only processed quickly, but were also processed with minimum errors.

However, a Harare senior attorney Terence Hussein lamented the judges’ difficult working conditions saying their efforts were not being fairly rewarded.

“There is no doubt there has been a positive result in the manner the judges of the High, Supreme and the Constitutional courts have been operating,” Hussein said.

“Some facilities though, need to be spruced up and complemented with the improvement of the judges’ conditions of service for their splendid job under difficult conditions.”