Make sure the judiciary can do its work

Speaking in a television interview in May, chief justice Raymond Zondo made a simple yet profound statement. He said that the best defence against attacks on the judiciary was for the judiciary to do its work. It has been famously said that the judiciary controls neither the sword nor the purse; its strength lies in the confidence and approbation of the public. Hence courts do their work in public, judgments are published and, in SA, court papers are public documents.

One of the reasons our courts have been so successful as a bulwark against executive abuse of power over the years is the confidence we have in them, and the Constitutional Court in particular. It should therefore be a matter of deep concern when court papers go missing at the apex court, twice in six months. Reports of mishaps at the registrar's office at the Supreme Court of Appeal were worse in a way because they involved politically sensitive cases.

In the heightened political atmosphere around these cases, it took a firm and clear statement by deputy chief justice Mandisa Maya, then president of the SCA, to stop the public descending into conspiracy theories about those incidents. Fortuitously, the incidents at the Constitutional Court did not involve politically charged cases, even though they were important. But they could easily have been, with undesirable consequences.

Looking at the latest incident, which we report on today, it is clear that there are no conspiracy theories here, no bad intentions and that everyone is trying their best. The big picture problem appears to be that the Constitutional Court was moved into a paperless working environment by Covid, before it was quite ready. The court administration also needs more hands. The office of the chief justice must urgently do what it needs to do to prevent a recurrence of failures in the system, and those who control the purse should give the court what it needs to be able to carry out its tasks effectively.