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Daniel Nemukuyu Senior Court Reporter—
The Judicial Service Commission has been urged to cultivate a culture of hard work among High Court judges to arrest the backlog of cases and improve efficiency. Responding to questions during a public interview for the selection of eight High Court judges, one of the candidates Mr Austin Sibanda said recruiting more judges time and again was not the solution to problems facing the court.

Mr Sibanda, who spent some years working in Botswana as a senior magistrate, took the commissioners through a lecture indicating that a few hard working judges can clear the backlog at the High Court without unnecessarily recruiting more.

“In 2014, you recruited six other judges of the High Court and this time you seek to recruit eight more. “Increasing the number of judges the way we are doing it here does not solve the problem. There is more to it than increasing the number of judges. JSC should identify hard working people who can do the work and dispose of the cases within a short space of time. The available judges must work hard.

“We have to cultivate a culture of hard work among the judges instead of continuously recruiting more,” said Mr Sibanda.

He told the panel that some judgments were reserved as far back as 2003, but the cases were still pending at court, a situation that called for the adoption of a spirit of hard work among the judges. Although Mr Sibanda failed the pre-interview test on judgment writing, he argued that he was good at it.

He said the markers were relying on a straight jacket approach to judgment writing that is taught in law school whereas some experienced lawyers like him had improved on it and adopted better styles.

“I do not believe in a one-size fits all approach to writing judgments. A judge should be able to write a judgment in a manner he sees fit as long as the reasoning is good. If one knows the law and puts the facts different from the other, that is only a matter of style. As long as I do it in terms of the law, there is nothing wrong,” he said.

Mr Ignatius Murambasvina, who was the first to be interviewed yesterday, told the court that he had only done a single civil trial in the High Court in his entire legal profession.

In the past two years, the Kadoma-based lawyer Mr Murambasvina said he never had any civil or criminal trial in the High Court. In his entire career, Mr Murambasvina said he mainly approached the High Court with bail applications and urgent applications.

His brother, Mr Stephen Murambasvina, left the gallery in stitches when he told the panel that his anti-corruption stance was chasing away clients from his chambers.

“I do not condone corruption at all. I do not facilitate corrupt dealings or partake on bribing presiding officers, hence most clients now shun me. For that reason, I have not been able to appear in the High Court or Supreme Court for trial over the past years,” he said.

“I have earned a tag ‘Mudhara uyu haashandike naye’ because I ask all corrupt clients to leave my office when they ask me to facilitate corruption,” he said. He told the panel that he had never done even a single civil trial in the High Court in his entire career.

Mr Leon Muringani, who scored two out of 10 on the pre-interview test on judgment writing, argued that his failure does not mean he was incompetent. He told the panel that he would quickly train himself to write judgments as soon as he lands the post sought.

Mr Muringani worked with four different law firms during his six years of working in private practice, a development that almost every panellist queried. A career public prosecutor Mr Nerville Wamambo brought a refreshing touch to the interview room as he eloquently presented his curriculum vitae.

Mr Wamambo, who is now based in Namibia, worked at the Attorney General’s Office in Zimbabwe for years and rose through the ranks to be a principal law officer. He left for Namibia where he is currently prosecuting in the High Court and the Supreme Court. The interviews continue today with more candidates being questioned.