Perhaps it’s time to interview members of the JSC panel

The Judicial Services Commission (JSC) is a body of parly politicos who basically decide who will be a judge. As you can imagine, it’s a pretty powerful body in shaping the country.

You may be thinking but you thought that it was el presidente who appoints judges and you’d be right. Thing is, that el president makes their decision based on the recommendations of the JSC, and pretty much almost always goes with what the JSC recommends.

It’s the beauty of the balance of power in our carefully crafted democracy. Historically, you didn’t hear much about the JSC interviews. Indeed, nothing stopped anybody from listening in but given the choice between judges being interviewed or attending the opening of your garage door, you’d probably opt to watch grass grow because those interviews were pretty dull.

Dull isn’t a bad thing though. The law in many respects, is rather dull and full of complex nuances that even philosophers would fall asleep contemplating. JSC interviews back in the day were of interest to basically two kinds of people; legal geeks and those planning to become judges and wanting to do homework. Many of the MPs in the commission would be legally trained and the interviews would be robust.

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As boring as it was, it got us some pretty impressive judges on the bench and that’s the result we want.

If you’re currently watching this new batch of interviews, goodness. Dull is the last word I’d use to describe it but I’m also not anticipating the results to be excellent.

From sweeping statements to strangely suggestive allegations to possible invention of rumours, the interview transcripts must read like the pilot script for an Emmy nominated soap.

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Now, it’s vital that the JSC does deal with important matters that are unrelated to law. If there are sexual harassment rumours against, say, Dunstan Mlambo then by all means, those must be canvassed. Hell, I doubt anybody would want a sexual harasser on the bench and if it’s in the mind of the JSC, it is likely to be on the mind of the public. Though it isn’t the job of the JSC to put these things in the mind of the public and the politicos in the JSC appear to think that it is. Moreover, they spend so much time on a matter that is hardly related to the legal prowess of the candidate that when they get to asking him legal matters, the candidate is already beyond the allocated time.

Funny that, how a body grilling a candidate about delays in cases go over time in asking their questions.

So how did it get to this point and what should we do about it? It’s annoying to even ask that question since the JSC has generally been granted the freedom to canvass whatever they wanted because, of course, picking judges is an important task for the nation and limitations on how to do that could be a problem.

In other words, they were rather self-regulatory and maintained the composure and discipline to get the job done. This batch, however, don’t appear to have those kinds of qualities. Yeah, it’s probably a couple of bad seeds who are propping one another up but frankly I don’t care if it’s one or all. The point remains that the outcome of the JSC’s job seems more tarnished now before even reaching conclusion. That’s a bad thing for the JSC and a poor comment on the collective.

So perhaps it’s time to interview the JSC commissioners and grill them on their role within the JSC and what they believe the JSC is supposed to be doing. If anything, after watching them conduct interviews, it would be grand to watch them stunned into sweet, ignorant silence.

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