Constitution Hill from above. The Magistrates’ Courts are listed in section 166 next to this building.
JASA is not a wage lobby with a newsletter. It is the public argument that the officer who hears a protection order at four o’clock is a judicial officer of the Republic, not a departmental grade. Section 165 of the Constitution vests judicial authority in the courts and requires organs of state to assist and protect them. Section 166 lists the Magistrates’ Courts in the same breath as the Constitutional Court. Van Rooyen v The State 2002 (5) SA 246 (CC) already held that magistrates are judicial officers, and that the arrangements under which they are appointed, paid, housed and disciplined form part of their independence.
The fight this spring has three files. First, a structural review of remuneration — not another 4.1 percent sticker on an old gap of almost a million rand between a magistrate and a High Court judge. Second, the Phase 2 transfer of court administration toward the Office of the Chief Justice: if the definition of “court” in that Bill forgets the district, we will say so the same day. Third, the quiet work of keeping colleagues on the bench — mentally, financially, and in the face of a criminal-justice inquiry that has put the whole system on television.
In one sentence
The fight for magistrates is the fight for the court that serves most South Africans. Pay is part of it. So is a working recording machine. So is a colleague who still sleeps.
A Monday that still never makes the news
Call her Magistrate M again. She is still a composite. The recording machine in Court 3 has been replaced, and now the replacement has a mood. A spoliation is on the roll at 09:00, brought ex parte at 08:25 with an affidavit that does not mention the occupier’s children. At 11:00 a regional-court trial part-heard since February. At 14:00 a colleague has gone quiet and the reserved-judgment list has grown a new name. At 16:15 she drives home and tries not to take the children’s- court voice with her. That Monday is why JASA exists.