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Mozambique: Backlog in Courts Slowly Reduces
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Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique (Maputo)
4 March 2008
Posted to the web 4 March 2008
Maputo
Mozambican law courts are slowly reducing their huge backlog of cases, according to the President of the Supreme Court, Mario Mangaze.
Speaking on Monday, at the opening of the 2008 judicial year, Mangaze said that in 2007 the courts closed 131,877 cases - a 24 per cent increase on the 2006 figure. Furthermore, the number of cases finished was considerably larger than the 109,582 new cases that entered the courts during the year.
Nonetheless, the amount of case work is huge for a system that only possesses 242 judges - of whom only 160 have law degrees.
Mangaze warned that, paradoxically enough, if the legal system performs better, then greater demands will be made on it by society. It was thus crucial to lessen the administrative burden that falls on judges.
Key to this strategy is the figure of Judicial Administrator. The first group of such administrators, all with degrees in economics or management, have been trained and will move into the courts in the near future, supporting the magistrates by looking after the paperwork.
Mangaze also called for using mechanisms of mediation and conciliation wherever possible, instead of dragging the courts into any and every conflict. Work on redrafting the country's cobwebbed legal codes, inherited from Portuguese colonial rule, should continue, he urged. Of particular importance was simplification of the Civil Procedural Code, the complexities of which Mangaze regarded as one of the main causes for the slowness of the courts in dealing with civil cases.
Mangaze could also report an encouraging improvement in the prisons. It used to be the case that most people held in Mozambican jails had been found guilty of nothing, but were simply awaiting trial. That picture has been reversed. In 2007, Mangaze said 66 per cent of the prison population consisted of people serving sentences, while only 34 per cent were on remand.
Attorney-General Augusto Paulino strongly denounced the wave of lynchings over the past few weeks in Mozambican cities. Angry mobs have taken the law into their own hands, and have beaten or burnt alleged criminals to death in Maputo, Beira and Chimoio. In Chimoio, in late February, mobs waged a running battle with the police who were protecting 12 prisoners from being lynched.
Lynching, said Paulino, was "an assault against the rule of law", and the involvement of children in lynch mobs meant that "death is being turned into a toy".
One problem Paulino pointed to is widespread ignorance of the law and of judicial procedures. Many people did not realize that petty theft can be dealt with summarily - that is a man caught red-handed can be arrested at night, taken to a magistrate and tried immediately in the morning, given a fine or a suspended sentence, and is thus a free man again in the afternoon. When the thief is seen walking the streets again, it is claimed that the police or the courts are corrupt, whereas in fact they have just done their jobs normally.
Paulino said he had found worrying anomalies in his recent tour of the provinces - such as cases of defamation in Zambezia province, where the public prosecutor, not the person supposedly offended, brought the cases, and where the accused were given no chance to defend themselves (defamation cases depend on complaints from the person who believe they have been libeled or slandered. Public prosecutors are not entitled to take the initiative.). Paulino was sure that if a prosecutor tried to act like this in Maputo, he would not get away with it, but wondered how many such abuses happen in the districts.
The chairperson of the Mozambican Bar Association, Carlos Cauio, called for "a speedier and less costly justice system, closer to citizens". He warned that lethargy in the administration of justice "disturbs the dynamics of economic activity, scares away investment, contributes to increased tensions and social conflicts, and allows the culture of impunity to flourish".
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"Justice has costs", said Cauio, "but when justice is delayed, the costs are always much higher. We understand that speed is not an absolute value, but also slowness must not be the rule, or the normal practice".
He warned that cases where judges had given "manifestly unjust and illegal sentences and decisions" strengthens citizens' distrust of the integrity of those involved, "and leads them to want to take the law into their own hands, which is unacceptable and dangerous for the stability of the state and of society".
Cauio called for strengthening of the judicial inspectorate, in order "to punish severely all those involved in behaviour that is corrupt or that seriously damages citizens' interests". He admitted that some lawyers were "complicit in these practices", and such cases should be denounced to the Bar Associations "so that it may take the appropriate measures".
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| Copyright © 2008 Agencia de Informacao de Mocambique. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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