Brigitte Mabandla Justice

Brigitte Mabandla | Justice College Memoir

leadership training. These proposals were deliberated upon by the Executive Committee of the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development (DOJ&CD). Though the support for establishing it as a statutory body was not given, various faculties were established in line with the recommendations. A Directorate that deals with systems/business applications training was established to ensure that the Department’s investments in new systems is not hampered by a lack of usage of the systems brought about by incompetence in how those functioned. A system of rolling needs assessments where all role players are continuously consulted on their training needs, was also established. Arising from this, the training programmes for persons to be appointed as magistrates as required by the Regulations for Judicial Officers in Lower Courts, 1994 mentioned above and the centralised seminars for aspirant regional magistrates, serving regional magistrates and civil magistrates have been maintained and further expanded. The duration of training interventions for criminal court magistrates have, however, on request, been reduced. The incidence of such interventions have, however, been increased and decentralized to at least one seminar in each of the nine provinces. During this period, the then Justice College was asked by the Department of International Relations and Cooperation to train cohorts of legal practitioners from the newly established Republic of South Sudan. This request was executed with officials from the then Justice College conducting training at the College as well as in South Sudan. The demand for training from neighbouring countries also increased with training provided in Botswana, Namibia, Lesotho and Eswatini. The then Justice College ceased to train judicial officers with the advent of the South African Judicial Education Institute (SAJEI), a new statutory institution established in terms of the South African Judicial Education Institute, Act 14 of 2008. The institute commenced with training in November 2011. The College and SAJEI, however, do remain aligned through a mutual mandate to provide training opportunities for judicial officers. The demand for training for other legal practitioners did not abate - instead there was a surge in the demand for programmes such as Legislative Drafting, Mediation in Medical Negligence Matters, Trial Advocacy, Cyber Crimes and others which evolved as old legislations transitioned and/or new pieces of legislation were introduced. The Department also embarked on a review of training delivery modalities. The late Prof Danny Titus, who was the Deputy Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of South Africa (UNISA) was seconded from the University to Act as the Head of Justice College in 2007 – 2008. During this period, the College felt the need to improve its curriculum development processes and strengthen its academic component by introducing lecturers who were predominantly not from within the public sector. The College was hitherto recruiting lecturers from within the Department. During this period, attempts were made to

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Brigitte Mabandla | Justice College | Memoir