BOFEPUSU warns Kgathi
Oarabile Mosikare | Wednesday March 8, 2017 16:10
Recently, Justice Abednego Tafa invalidated the appointments of some CoA judges. Last week, Minister of Defence, Justice and Security, Kgathi, gazetted the CoA Amendment Bill whose object is to comply with the High Court decision. The Bill proposes that Section 4 of the Court of Appeal (CoA) Act prescribe the number of Justices of Appeal to be 12.
Further, he proposes that the tenure of office of a Judge of the CoA be increased from 70 years to 80 years. The labour federation says Kgathi’s legislation is intended to have dual impact. “Firstly, to have Parliament prescribe the number of Judges. Secondly, in order to circumvent the difficulty of the constitutional invalidity of renewing Judges’ contracts, to increase the age of entire net of Judges from 70 years to 80 years, and apply retrospectively to 1980,” says BOFEPUSU deputy secretary general Ketlhalefile Motshegwa.
Motshegwa says once the legislation passes, the need to give Judges contract falls away as they would not have attained the age of 80. The 1980 legislation prescribed the retirement age of judges to be 65. In 2001 the Government held a referendum which amongst other questions asked Batswana to indicate whether they ‘agree that the retirement age of Judges of the High Court and CoA should be increased from 65 to 70’.
Motshegwa says of the 22,500 people that voted in the referendum, just over half the number voted in favour of the amendment. “The proposed legislation by Kgathi seeks to ignore the referendum and therefore ignoring a legal step that has already taken place and which by its very nature is unlawful.”
He continues: “If Kgathi continues with efforts to circumvent the process of the (2001) referendum to unconstitutionally increase the age of retirement of CoA judges to 80 years, then we will have no choice but to challenge such amendment before Court.” He said Parliament must therefore reject this part of seeking to smuggle back some of those Judges through the 80 years retirement age.
He says as MPs debate the Bill, they urge them to utilise such an opportunity to cause for localisation of CoA. “It is unpatriotic that after 50 years of Independence we still have a CoA that is all white males. Independence should be having meaning to the effect that as a country we are capable of running our affairs.
As a country, we have highly capable Batswana who can ascend to the CoA, thereby creating opportunities for others to get into High Court judgeship. It is also urgently necessary to bring about integrity within Judiciary for the sake of public trust because of recent the Judiciary had been mired in crisis.”
Lastly, he said they would be waiting to hear the outcome of Parliament to navigate their way forward. “It is our role as BOFEPUSU to fight for democracy of this country, to ensure protection of the country and hold Parliament accountable in its legislative duties so that it doesn’t pass unjust laws.”