Min­is­ter of Justice Mmamo­loko Kubayi is con­sid­er­ing back­ing down on her decision to remove Mad­ibeng in the North West from the jur­is­dic­tion of the Gauteng High Court (Pre­toria), reports Business Day.

Kubayi, under pres­sure from the Mad­ibeng Attor­neys’ Asso­ci­ation, which is chal­len­ging her decision to place the dis­trict under the jur­is­dic­tion of the North West High Court (Mahikeng), has ini­ti­ated set­tle­ment talks.

The asso­ci­ation – a group of legal prac­ti­tion­ers from the dis­trict loc­ated on the bound­ary that sep­ar­ates the North West and Gauteng – took Kubayi to court seek­ing to review and set aside the decision to place the dis­trict in the jur­is­dic­tion of the North West High Court (Mahikeng).

The set­tle­ment, if made a court order, will see changes to the Depart­ment of Justice & Con­sti­tu­tional Devel­op­ment’s recent Gov­ern­ment Gaz­ette, signed by Kubayi, chan­ging areas fall­ing under High Court jur­is­dic­tions in dif­fer­ent provinces.

The bone of con­ten­tion is that res­id­ents’ right to access courts would be neg­at­ively affected by the decision, which now forces them to lit­ig­ate in Mahikeng, about 260km from Brits (Mad­ibeng) instead of Pre­toria, 51km away.

They want the Gauteng High Court (Pre­toria) to con­tinue exer­cising jur­is­dic­tion over Mad­ibeng until a local seat of the North West Divi­sion is estab­lished at Rusten­burg.

Kubayi, rep­res­en­ted by the Office of the State Attor­ney, last week wrote a let­ter to the asso­ci­ation’s attor­ney, Cor­ne­lus Lourens, seek­ing to settle instead of oppos­ing the applic­a­tion.

One of the pro­posed grounds for set­tle­ment is that Mad­ibeng would revert to the jur­is­dic­tion of the Gauteng divi­sion, Pre­toria, and remove it from the jur­is­dic­tion of the North West High Court.

This was the main relief the Mad­ibeng attor­neys sought in tak­ing the Min­is­ter to court.

The state law­yers and Mad­ibeng law­yers will this week con­tinue the set­tle­ment talks to agree on a final court order. Speak­ing for Mad­ibeng Attor­neys Asso­ci­ation, Letl­ho­gonolo Maimane con­firmed to Busi­ness Day that the asso­ci­ation was in set­tle­ment talks with the Min­is­ter’s rep­res­ent­at­ives.

Business Day reports that the changes to the Gauteng High Court (Pre­toria) jur­is­dic­tion have attrac­ted other lit­ig­a­tion for the Min­is­ter.

The Pre­toria Soci­ety of Advoc­ates and Pre­toria Attor­neys Asso­ci­ation have also taken the Min­is­ter to court. They want to review and set aside Kubayi’s decision lim­it­ing areas under the jur­is­dic­tion of the High Court under the same notice the Mad­ibeng law­yers take issue with.

The July notice ended the con­cur­rent jur­is­dic­tion for the Gauteng High Court (Johan­nes­burg) and (Pre­toria) regime, which means the courts now have defined geo­graph­ical areas of jur­is­dic­tion.

Pre­toria no longer has jur­is­dic­tion for mat­ters that arose in Johan­nes­burg, Ekur­hu­leni, Sed­ibeng or the West Rand.

Lit­ig­ants have to insti­tute lit­ig­a­tion in the spe­cified jur­is­dic­tion or face the fin­an­cial costs of lit­ig­at­ing in a wrong court. The matter is now in case man­age­ment before Judge Pres­id­ent Aubrey Ledwaba.

JSA chair Don Mahon said the Johan­nes­burg Bar took the decision not to join the lit­ig­a­tion.

Full Business Day report