Tanzanian lawyers in uproar after judge suspends their immediate past president from practice
When prominent Tanzanian legal counsel, Fatma Karume, argued a recent case in the high court of Tanzania, she could not have anticipated the full outcome. Sure, she lost the case, but this is something all lawyers must assume may happen at any time and in any case. But how could she have known she would also raise the anger of her court opponents and the presiding judge? Citing argument by opposing counsel that her argument had been rude and 'inappropriate', the judge decided to suspend Karume from practice, and ordered the registrar of the high court to refer a ‘professional misconduct matter’ to the advocate’s disciplinary committee.
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Lesotho's Acting Chief Justice names fellow judges likely biased against her
 The Acting Chief Justice of Lesotho, the woman who recently brought a hall full of African judges to their feet with applause as she explained the difficult circumstances under which judges and magistrates in that country operate, is on notice that she is fighting for her professional life. Judge Maseforo Mahase says 'powerful forces' in Lesotho want her impeached. Though three local judges have been appointed to hear the case that will decide whether an impeachment tribunal should be set up to investigate allegations against her, she says the three - plus the entire high court bench of judges - should recuse themselves and that foreign judges should be asked to hear the matter.
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Judge & applicant instructed same legal counsel: grounds for recusal?
 In this most unusual set of circumstances, a Namibian acting judge, while still in his permanent post as principal magistrate, needed to bring an insurance claim. His insurance company sent formal instructions to counsel. Now, as acting judge, he has an applicant before him represented by the same counsel. Are these good grounds for the applicant’s recusal application?
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Girl power in action at Kenya court
 Three daughters have gone to court to fight for their right to inherit from their father. This, after their brothers had divided the estate among themselves, deliberately withholding from Kenya's high court the fact that the sisters even existed.
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Judge slams ‘indiscriminate patchwork job’ by prosecution
S v Lameck
High Court, Windhoek, Namibia
Judge Christie Liebenberg
This is a case about permits to work in Namibia. Before he deals with the specific issues, Judge Liebenberg has something to say about the way the prosecution drew the charges faced by the accused. As it turns out, his criticism should be borne in mind through the whole reading of this judgment, as the problems created by the prosecution, and mentioned in the judge’s critique, eventually result in an acquittal.
It seems necessary to firstly comment on the manner in which the charge is drawn. Its drafter simply duplicated the entire subsection into the charge irrespective of its applicability to the facts available to the state and, according to which, the offence was allegedly committed. In its current form one does not know whether all three the accused persons committed individual fraudulent acts or made one or more false representations by conduct when making the alleged false declaration, or whether they acted with common purpose. The charge is further contradicting in that it reads that the misrepresentation was made to facilitate or assist accused no 2 … remaining in Namibia, or assisting his entrance into Namibia, or his residence in Namibia. With the facts (at) the disposal of the state when drawing the charges, there was no need to simply join together all possibilities provided for in the section, generating a charge that is not only vague and embarrassing, but self-contradicting. Such approach cannot be in the interest of the administration of justice and it should not be left up to the defence (or the court) to seek clarity on the averments made in a charge. In the present instance there was simply no reason for the state to indiscriminately patch together the charge in its current form.
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Warning about ‘house-keeping issues’: Judges remind Supreme Court Registrar not to accept processes that don’t comply with the rules
Henwood NO v Henwood NO
Supreme Court, Eswatini
Appeal Judges S P Dlamini and M J Dlamini, Acting Appeal Judge J Mavuso
Before he begins with the specific issues raised in this case, Judge S P Dlamini said there were some ‘house-keeping issues’ that needed attention.
Once again, this court finds itself compelled to caution the office of the Registrar not to accept processes that are not filed in terms of the rules. This is not only a procedural concern, litigants coming before this court may (otherwise) be exposed to unwarranted legal bills as is the situation in the present matter.
(The court then quotes earlier decisions on the same issue that caution the Registrar’s office: ‘Where the Rules preclude the office from accepting processes that are out of time, ... it must be done at all times in a uniform fashion. Therefore, the phenomenon whereby filing of papers which are out of time is allowed in certain cases and rejected in others must stop forthwith.’)
I reiterated this caution to the office of the Registrar of the Supreme Court in this matter. This is as much applicable to cases in which leave has to be sought and obtained from the Courts, in order to issue certain processes, as in the cases, covered by the Judgments, referred to above.
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Global Insights on Access to Justice 2019
World Justice Project
This is a world first, and worth examining even if just to see how cleverly the data has been presented. It represents the first time that data has been captured from various sources, and put together in one place, showing how the people of the world experience access to justice. Type in the name of your country – or any of 101 countries – and see the opinions of the more than 100 000 people interviewed for the different data projects represented in the collection. What proportion report having problems with accessing justice? What were the delays they have experienced? Did the people of Kenya know where to access legal help any better than the people in Nigeria for example? Was the percentage of legal problems resolved in Botswana higher than that in Namibia? How long did it take, on average, to resolve legal problems in Uganda? If you prefer to read the data in report form, click here and see the range of text reports available. Here are a couple of key take-aways: about half of the vast number of people interviewed had experienced at least one legal problem in the two years before the survey. More than 40 % of those surveyed said their legal problem negatively affected their lives. Some became physically ill as a result, and more than one in every five said they had lost their job or had to relocate as a result of their legal problem.
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About Carmel Rickard
Carmel Rickard has written about the law, human rights, justice, judgements and judicial matters for many years. A former legal editor of The Sunday Times, South Africa's biggest newspaper, she is now a columnist on legal issues.
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JIFA is a partnership between the DGRU at UCT, the SACJF and ICJ-AFRICA, which provides university-certified short courses to judges in Africa.
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