MyJHB

Stuff from Johannesburg

Roof literally collapsing on court infrastructure

Dear Editor

While the judiciary continues to uphold the law in an admirable manner, it does so under increasingly unacceptable circumstances. Court infrastructure is in dire straits, highlighted by the shocking collapse of the Potchefstroom Magistrates Court’s roof this Monday.

While there were no casualties, the collapse damaged the cash hall, and offices used for child maintenance and the clerk of the civil court. The building has now been declared unsafe, thereby denying access to justice to residents in the area.

For many months, a lack of maintenance and essential repairs have been reported, and the situation could easily have been more dire had the court been occupied at the time of the roof collapse.

While the DA welcomes the lack of casualties, it is also curious that it appears nobody was in the court at approximately 16:00 in the afternoon. The DA will be seeking further answers on this matter too.

This roof collapse is but one example of the unacceptable condition the judiciary’s infrastructure finds itself in.

Examples of recent failures in judicial infrastructure include:

  • Broken stenography machines at the Parow Sexual Offences Court, resulting in a massive
    backlog of cases developing;
  • A Khayelitsha Magistrates Court postponing a murder trial due to the court running out of
    photocopy paper;
  • The continuing delay in fully digitising the South Africa court system through the Integrated Justice System, thereby hampering the efficiency of the courts;
  • A lack of functional air conditioning in a variety of courts across the country;
  • Reports of certain High Courts lacking telephones, internet, and access to email services; and
  • Loadshedding for 6 to 8 hours per day reduces court hours to 2 hours or less per day, increasing backlogs and decimating the right of citizens to access Justice at all.

The DA will be seeking answers from the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development as well as Public Works and Infrastructure on why court infrastructure has been allowed to deteriorate to such a degree that the roofs of our courts are literally collapsing in on themselves. We will also seek to hold whoever is responsible for the maintenance of the Potchefstroom magistrate court to account.

Individuals working within our courts are often highly competent and exemplary individuals, however they are being let down by government’s failure to provide them with the infrastructure and resources they need. The DA will be working to ensure this situation improves as a matter of urgency.

Regards

Adv Glynnis Breytenbach MP
DA Shadow Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development

Category:

Top Star Drive-In: Destroyed by What Created it

However, the very thing that created the Top Star eventually destroyed it. Because the early miners had used crude methods, the Ferreira Dump—and dozens of others like it—still contained significant traces of gold. As the price of gold rose and new chemical extraction technologies (like the carbon-in-pulp process) made it profitable to “mine the waste,” the ground beneath the Top Star became more valuable than the cinema itself. In 2006, despite fierce opposition from heritage groups who argued that the dump and the drive-in were culturally significant landmarks, the projectors were turned off for the last time.

The reclamation of the dump was a staggering industrial feat. Starting in 2008, mining giant DRDGold used high-pressure water cannons to “monitor” the dump, turning 5 million tons of solid earth back into a liquid slurry. This slurry was then piped 40 kilometers across the province to a processing plant in Brakpan. By 2011, the “mountain” had completely vanished. The 50-meter-high plateau that had dominated the southern skyline for a century was reduced to a flat, dusty crater.

The disappearance of the Top Star is a poignant symbol of Johannesburg’s “extractive” nature. It is a city that consumes itself to stay alive; even its historical landmarks are subject to the fluctuating price of minerals on the London and New York stock exchanges. Today, if you drive along the M2, there is an empty space in the sky where the Top Star used to be. While the reclamation removed a source of toxic dust and “acid mine drainage,” it also erased a piece of the city’s collective memory. The land where the gold-flecked mountain once stood is now being rehabilitated for light industrial use, proving that in eGoli, even the horizon is for sale if there’s enough gold hidden inside it.