The Weekly Editorial

President Jacob Zuma’s move to appoint more female judges tot he difference benches in our country is a necessary and long overdue thing to do.

The lack of women in the bench, 19 years after the dawn of democracy, is an indictment to the profession and the country as a whole. Women in the legal profession have been neglected for far too long.

A recent study also showed that African women make up less than one percent of the senior counsel in the legal profession in South Africa.

Of the 473 senior counsels from whose ranks candidate judges are selected, only nine were black women, the Sunday Times reported on April 21. Of the nine women, only four were African.

Twenty white women were practising as senior counsel in South Africa, the newspaper reported. A paper prepared by the University of Cape Town’s democratic governance and rights unit lashed out at the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) for the slow pace of gender transformation in the judiciary, it was reported.

The paper said only 28 percent of judicial officers nationally were women as of October 2012.

The new female corps of judges appointed by the president include Madam Justice Halima Khanam, who was been appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeals (SCA); Wendy Hughes, who is now a judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Pretoria and Nomsa Victoria Khuma, who has been appointed as a judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Johannesburg.

The others include Daisy Sekao, who has been appointed as a judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Pretoria, and Leonie Windell who is now a judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Johannesburg.
Other appointments made by the president are as follows:

• Judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal:  Justice Nigel Paul Willis.
• Justice Aubrey Phago Ledwaba as deputy judge president of the North and South Gauteng High Courts.
• Advocate Gregory Charles Wright as a judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Johannesburg.
• Brian Amos Mashile as judge of the North and South Gauteng High Courts, Johannesburg.

Zuma has also, in terms of section 36(2) and (3) read with section 39 of the Competition Act, 1998 (Act 89 of 1998), and on the advice of the JSC, appointed Justice Dennis Martin Davis, a judge of the Western Cape High Court, Cape Town, as judge president of the Competition Appeal Court, for a period of five years. All the appointments to the oversight body are with effect from July 1, 2013.

The appointments come a month after Judicial Service Commission (JSC) member Izak Smuts resigned after controversy over his leaked report on transformation. The JSC provides the president with a list of recommended appointees.

Smuts was given a “torrid” ride at a closed sitting of the commission when the document that he had penned for internal circulation, which had been leaked to the media in early April, was discussed. In the report, Smuts stated that the commission had a bias against appointing white male candidates and that it only did so in “exceptional circumstances”.

Smuts, a representative of the advocates’ profession on the commission, was appointed to the JSC in 2009 and in a statement to the media later in April, said that he had found the commission’s track record during that time “disturbing”.

The commission’s spokesperson, Dumisa Ntsebeza, told the Sunday Times at the time that government was failing black and female advocates by not giving them enough work to allow them to get experience and be considered for appointment as senior counsel.

“It’s a scandal that we should have only four black female silks in this day and age,” Ntsebeza was quoted as saying last month.

It is disturbing that people like Smuts choose to make a hullabaloo about the so-called exclusion of white male lawyers from the bench by the JSC when they are already dominating the legal profession and the judiciary. He chooses to ignore completely the plight of black lawyers who have watch their white counterparts get lucrative briefs from government and big business while they have to settle for leftovers.

Joining the bench for these black lawyers is a far-fetched dream, they are still struggling to make it as top lawyers because the big attorney firms, most of which are white owned, will not give them a change to practise their skills and thrive. So it takes them forever to become silks and be in a position to apply for a position in the bench.

The JSC must be firm when it comes to ensuring that black lawyers in general, and black female judges in particular, are given an opportunity to serve in the bench. It must, in conjunction with the department of justice, develop a programme to deliberately mentor and train black female lawyers and prepare them to become judges.