18 May 2025

Chief Registrar responsible for Administration of Justice, Ms Beaulah Mguni says the department is looking to establish specialised commercial courts to try cases that have an impact on the economy of the country. 

Appearing before the Public Accounts Committee last Thursday, Ms Mguni said the specialised courts were being considered in order to decongest the system as currently judges presided over all types of cases. Ms Mguni said they were currently benchmarking courts systems in other jurisdictions. She said the Administration of Justice was also reviewing its rules to improve service delivery. 

She observed that the courts were not fully digitised as the Court Record Management System was outdated and obsolete except in Gaborone. She pointed that the department intended to keep rolling out a functional records management system to other parts of the country. She explained that the process would involve buying new equipment and network expansion. Ms Mguni also said the department was currently in the procurement process for a service provider to expand the system. 

She cautioned that by the next financial year, the department would not have gone fully digital as it continued to accumulate new cases, which created a backlog of cases not registered in the system. She explained that in the interim, cases would continue being registered manually as the department’s e-filing system had not been operationalised. She said they had to procure another service provider to build the e-filing component of the Case Records Management System. She also said the entry of documents to be digital was something that would go beyond the end of the 2025-2026 financial year. 

“We are looking into digitising as much as possible in terms of using technology to produce records very fast in order to ensure that even the latest cases do not slip back into backlog,” she said. ENDS