By Nomfundo Manyathi-Jele

Communities in the Gauteng and North West provinces are travelling shorter distances to access justice services closer to where they live. This initiative was launched by the Justice Department and is known as the ‘rationalisation of magisterial districts to municipal boundaries’.

This initiative seeks to align the magisterial boundaries of the country’s courts with municipal and provincial boundaries, which ensures that people are serviced by a court that is within their municipal boundaries.

For example, in terms of the old magisterial boundaries, the Diepsloot community had to travel to the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court to access justice services, which is a distance of about 40 kilometres. With the rationalisation process, the Diepsloot community will now be serviced by the Randburg Magistrate’s Court, which is some 15 kilometres away.

In a press release, the Justice Department said that the aim was to alleviate the long distances travelled by communities to access courts and costs they incurred. Moreover, this programme seeks to redress the racially based judicial boundaries under Apartheid where courts were established mainly in affluent areas while historically disadvantaged areas were serviced through under resourced and dilapidated courts.

The Justice Department said that all new cases enrolled from 1 December 2014 in Gauteng and North West are being dealt with in accordance with the newly-proclaimed areas of jurisdictions. Other provinces will undergo the same process from April 2015 starting with Limpopo and Mpumalanga.

There will also be a seat for a Division of the High Court in each of the nine provinces to ensure that communities are able to access services of a High Court in the province of their residence. The construction of the Limpopo and Mpumalanga seats of the High Court, which are currently underway, is part of this reform process.

Nomfundo Manyathi-Jele NDip Journ (DUT) BTech Journ (TUT) is the news editor at De Rebus.

This article was first published in De Rebus in 2015 (March) DR 10.