The roll will still be there tomorrow. You do not have to carry every file home in your chest.
A court that is independent on paper can still grind the person who sits in it. Vicarious trauma is not a soft subject. It is what happens when you hear a children’s-court enquiry before tea, a sexual-offence trial after tea, and a protection order at four o’clock, and then drive home as if the day were ordinary.
Add a heavy roll, a broken recording machine, a security scare at the entrance, and a salary that does not match the responsibility, and the cost stops being “resilience.” It becomes sleeplessness, irritability on the bench, isolation from family, and, for some colleagues, debt and quiet despair. That is not weakness. It is the predictable result of asking one human being to hold other people’s worst days, every day, without a structure that holds them back.
JASA’s position is simple. Looking after judicial mental health is part of section 165(4) — the duty to protect the effectiveness and the dignity of the courts. A reserved judgment that never comes, or a hearing that is sharp because the officer is exhausted, is not only a private sorrow. It is a public-confidence problem.
Please keep these numbers in your drawer
SADAG 24-hour line 0800 567 567 or SMS 31393. If you are in immediate danger, call 10111. A conversation with a trusted colleague or a registered counsellor is not a disciplinary event. It is how a bench stays human.
Practical things we can do for one another without any circular from head office: do not leave a junior colleague alone with a week of GBV trials; take a real lunch; send the reserved-judgment list home at a decent hour; and if a colleague’s tone on the bench has changed, ask once, kindly, off the record.
The tea principle — a three-panel reminder
“Order in the court… after coffee.” • “A motion for a tea break — granted. With rusks.” • “Justice is served. So were we.”