Sweltering heat takes its toll on legal eagles

GALE NGAKANE
Correspondent | Thursday November 24, 2011 00:00

As they perambulate the corridors of the hallowed institution, they could be seen frantically using their legal documents to fan themselves from the debilitating heat and using the sleeves of their lofty gowns to wipe sweat from their brows.  This writer cannot put a finger on the exact number in degrees Celsius, but by estimation, the past two weeks must have scaled to the wrong side of the 40.

Take Friday last week. The spaciousness of Courtroom Three could not assuage the heat that consumed all and sundry inside the room. To make matters worse, it had its wide windows, behind Justice Terrence Rannowane, hermetically shut, as if a slight hint of air through them might cause some kind of disaster. Perhaps, this could explain Rannowane's burst of temper when an accused person kept waving his hand after being led into the dock.

At one stage the man uttered something to the effect that he wanted to ask something.

'Hey you! Who are you to come and wave your hands about in my court? Do you know that I can add a few more years to the ones you already have? Sit down!' he bellowed to the bemused accused.

In another courtroom, Justice Moses Chinhengo was in a predicament. While trying in vain to content himself with a noisy fan that kept going 'trrrrrr! Trrrr!' and drowning speakers' voices, he had to have it switched off and the heat returned with a vengeance.

It was in the middle of a cross-examination of one elderly Keboletse Mooketsi, a witness in a family feud case before the judge.  As a defence attorney was grilling him, Mooketsi, in a black jacket, kept leaning on the rails of the witness box, perhaps to raise his voice a few decibels up in a vain attempt to compete with the whirring fan.

In Courtroom Six, where Justice Phadi Solomon presides over cases, the windows were wide open, but a 10-minute adjournment to get some fresh air had to be made - to the relief of a contingent of sweating grey-haired old men in heavy jackets, who were said to have come from Serule. Mmegi discovered in - the past two weeks that the High Court in its entirety is without air-conditioning, making its habitation an unbearable ordeal.  In one of the offices that I popped in on Tuesday morning, despite an all-night rain and a good invigorating breeze outside in the morning, office workers had to content themselves with paper fans. In another office where I dropped in to make an enquiry, a worker said they were now trusting in God because they did not know when the air conditioning would be restored. 'Re a pshwa re a nyelela. Re setse re beile fela mo Modimong (We are being roasted alive. We're now putting our trust in God,' the office worker said with a sense of resignation.

When approached, the Deputy Registrar and Master of the High Court, Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe tried putting the situation in its proper context saying the air-conditioning system in the high court has been in existence since 2002 when the court was first opened.

'It is not as if there is a deliberate ploy by anybody for us to be in such an unbearable situation. It is now close to 10 years since the air-conditioning has been in place,' he said. Apparently, a contractor has been hired to fix the air-conditioning.

According to Ketlogetswe, two motors that support the air conditioning have since broken down and there is need for its replacement. 'I understand that the contractor has ordered them and will soon work on repairing the air-conditioners,' said Ketlogetswe on Monday. By Tuesday morning, there was no contractor in sight and as the sun was rising, so was the heat. In the event the weather does not grant the court clemency, the legal eagles will continue being roasted.