Zondo delivers final Judiciary Report, concerned about ConCourt matters, criminal cases backlog
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo presented the Annual Judiciary Report at the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein on Friday.
Chief Justice Raymond Zondo. Picture: Thabiso Goba/Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - The superior courts met 11 of their 13 performance targets in the 2022/2023 financial year but they are still struggling to finalise Constitutional Court matters and to reduce the backlog of criminal cases.
On Friday, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo presented the Annual Judiciary Report at the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein.
Only 55% of Constitutional Court matters were finalised, and the target is 70%.
Zondo said previously they performed better in this respect.
"And this issue is being investigated to establish exactly why there was such a big drop but 55% is of course not a failure, it is simply not as good a pass as one would have liked," he said.
Zondo has also reiterated previous calls for a constitutional amendment to allow panels at the Constitutional Court to expedite the finalisation of these matters.
The target when it comes to reducing the criminal case backlog, meanwhile, was to get it down to 30% but as Zondo said they did not manage to achieve this either.
"We were only able to reduce the backlog up to the average of 47% - which means that this will have to be a work in progress and hopefully in the next annual report we will perform better," said Zondo.