29 Mar 2016

The Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Mr Shaw Kgathi, says the President, as appointing authority of High Court judges, is the one vested with powers to discipline, suspend and remove a judge from office in terms of section 97 of the Constitution.

Mr Kgathi was responding to a question asked by Francistown East MP, Mr Buti Billy, who had wanted to know if the minister would consider reviewing the performance of High Court judges periodically with a view to having non performing and incompetent judges removed from their positions.

 The MP stated that there had been overwhelming complaints from members of the public as well as the Law Society of Botswana regarding performance of some judges.

However, Mr Kgathi outlined that section 97 set out the circumstances and process through which a judge could be removed from office.

“The honourable Chief Justice, in his capacity as head of the judiciary, has supervisory powers over the conduct and performance of judges and monitors their performance accordingly,” the minister said. 

He further explained that delays in the completion of cases before the High Court involved several stakeholders, pointing out that each delay should be looked at on its own merit. 

However, he stated that he was aware of the growing public outcry about delayed cases and thus established a task force to establish where bottlenecks existed and improve turn-around time in the justice delivery system.  Ends