Story by Peter Chivhima
The Judicial Service Commission (JSC) managed to set up 15 Regional and Residential Magistrate Courts this year as part of the drive to bring justice delivery closer to people’s door steps.
JSC Secretary Mr Walter Chikwana speaks on the strides realised in justice delivery this year.
“In 2024 the success has been unprecedented because we have never done it since the inception of the Judicial Service Commission in 2010. We have opened and established new regional magistrates in Guruve, Mutoko, Kwekwe, Zvishavane. The other four are already functional except for Guruve where we are now finalising and working on the logistical areas so that we have proper infrastructure that will house the regional court. So our numbers of regional magistrates have increased in that respect. We have also established close to 10 resident magistrates courts within the country. We have established a resident magistrate court in Mabvuku where again we are going to open a regional magistrate there. We have since commenced construction of the courthouse in Mabvuku and we are quite certain that during the course of the year the courthouse will be ready to be opened,” he said.
Mr Chikwana added that 2024 also saw the JSC hosting several regional and international conferences.
“2024 was quite eventful for the Judicial Services Commission on various fronts in our interaction regionally with other countries in our pursuit of access to justice and of course in capacitating members of the Judicial Services Commission so that the work output that comes out of the court has quality and people have confidence in the judiciary. So we started the year through hosting the electoral justice network which is a network of African judges whose mandate is to preside over electoral matters in various African countries. So the network, Zimbabwe was requested to host that network at the beginning of the day which we did successfully and what we call the Victoria Falls Declaration in which it dealt with how electoral matters can be properly adjudicated at home and we then hosted the big one which is the Conference of the Constitutional Jurisdictions of Africa. This is the biggest judiciary gathering in Africa which has membership of 55 countries and we were asked to host that conference which is held bi-annually. The last time it was held in Morocco and we had 43 countries that participated and 10 regional and international organizations and with an excess of 200 delegates.”
The JSC successes are building from the launch of the Integrated Electronic Case Management System (IECMS) in 2022, which automated the country’s courts with a view to bring transparency and expediency in justice delivery.
