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62 State of Judiciary 2011-2012
Chapter 6
6.0 FINANCE AND RESOURCE DEVELOPMENT
6.1 Historical Backdrop
Prior to its delinking from the Executive, the Judiciary’s budget
was developed and implemented as a departmental financial
statement falling under the vote of the Office of the Attorney-
General. Since then, this budget, while institutionally separate
from other Executive agencies, has been treated in large part as
akin to a “ministerial” budget, while retaining the term “Judicial
Department” as its vote name. This continued to be the case
with the advent of the Medium-Term Expenditure Framework
(MTEF), and the introduction of MTEF Sectors at the turn of
the millennium. In this latter period, the Judiciary was placed
under the Public Safety, Law and Order MTEF Sector, which was
then reconfigured, following the launch of Vision 2030, into the
Governance, Justice, Law and Order (GJLOS) MTEF sector.
In terms of financial management and value for money, the
backdrop is largely informed by the 2007 Report of the Task Force
on Ethics and Governance in the Judiciary. This report found a
corruption-prone, error-riddled, inefficient and largely manual
system in place and made recommendations – which continue
to be relevant - to revamp budget preparation and control,
expenditure and payments, revenue collection and deposits,
payroll management, procurement and capital development,
accounting, audit and reporting.
In 2009, the Report of the Task Force on Judicial Reforms aptly
noted that “the question of the independence of the Judiciary
has arisen particularly with regard to the funding of its operations”
and went on to recommend that “…the financial independence
of the Judiciary (must) be underpinned by legislation….”. These
observations have historically been a constant feature of the
numerous Task Force and other studies that the Judiciary has
undertaken since de-linking from the Civil Service in 1993.
6.2 Overall Context Leading into 2011/12
Chapter 10 of the Constitution radically transformed the policy,
legal and institutional context for the Judiciary. In public financial