Bring justice to customary courts

Mmegi Editor | Friday August 22, 2014 11:39

Take the story of the young man who got whipped at Urban Customary Court or Mosetlheng as it is popularly known.His only crime was having in his possession some cheap cologne and roll-on. In spite of his protestations that he got the fragrances from his middle-class sister, and the sister explaining that she indeed bought them for him, the customary court meted out its punishment – four strokes on his bare buttocks for theft.

 The court concluded that since neither the young man, nor his sister could produce receipt of purchase he must have stolen the items. But should customary courts mete out such irreversible punishment on the basis of some probability? Sadly that is the case.

Walk into any customary court on any day, and chances are you will find all accused persons are found guilty. And the courts, largely led by semi-literate to illiterate old men, take no prisoners. Sadly no one appears to notice. Not even the District Commissioners who supposedly supervise court presidents, or the judicial courts, which are the real custodians of justice.

So ridiculous is justice at customary courts that a person can be convicted in the absence of the plaintiff. For some reason, some of the presiding officers believe they have ability to work better than a lie detector and science.  Stories abound of how someone was instructed to support a child because “ the child looks like you”.

There are even stories of presiding officers sentencing people to life or death. As laughable and absurd as these may sound, the sad reality is that it happens. Mercifully the system will not recognise a death or life sentence passed by a customary court. What is truly laughable is the fact that in his mind the presiding officer believes he is truly dispensing justice.

The high school graduate sitting next to him and playing court-clerk only serves as his reader, spelling out from time to time what punishment the penal code - a document written in legalese - prescribes.  Equally sad is the fact the convict is normally either semi-literate or illiterate and unaware of his rights. Because they have carte blanche to decide how to dispense with matters before them, customary court presidents, with absolutely no regard for the rights of the accused, determine the category of offense the person has committed and what sort of punishment to mete out.  Painful and irreversible as it is, ‘lucky’ is the person who gets whipped. Many unlucky ones are sent to prison where they are packed like sardines with hard-core criminals.

We believe it is time government introduced reforms to the customary court system to afford more of our poor people some justice.  The claim that the system provides speedier dispensing of justice is obviously flawed considering it has become the perpetrator of injustice.

Today’s thought

A man’s vanity tells him what is honor,

a man’s conscience what is justice.

 

– Walter Savage Landor