CJ advises C’wealth judges to take challenges as opportunities

THE Chief Justice (CJ) of Tanzania, Prof Ibrahim Juma, has advised Judges and Magistrates from Commonwealth countries to address the challenges they are facing as opportunities when carrying out the duties of providing justice to the people.

Prof Juma made the appeal in Accra, Ghana recently, while presenting a topic on Mobile and Virtual Courts at the 19^th Triennial Conference of the Commonwealth Magistrates and Judges Association (CMJA) held last week.

The CJ pointed out that Tanzania is an expansive country spanning over 900,000 square kilometres and a population of more than 60 million people, saying it has always been a challenge to reach out to everyone in provision of justice especially those in hard-to-reach areas.

Prof Juma emphasized, however, that such challenge acted as a motivation for them to think out of the box and devise ways to ensure access to justice for the Tanzanian population even during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It is empowering to learn from (this) that the more challenges we face, the more we should be motivated to resolve them,” he told the well-attended conference.

The Chief Justice further pointed out that the Judiciary in Tanzania had embraced strategic planning, as a tool to properly engage the executive on priorities and actual needs of the Judiciary.

Through strategic planning, the CJ expounded, the Judiciary of Tanzania has got onto the driver’s seat thus enhancing performance in all areas including significant reduction of backlog cases.

He said one of the leading management gurus of the 20th Century, Peter Drucker, probably never envisioned that of all institutions, the judiciary, as conservative as it was (and still is) would one day be on the forefront of strategic planning.

“Indeed, failing to plan is planning to fail. The Judiciary of Tanzania is far from planning to fail,” Prof Juma told the conference held this year under the theme ‘Access to Justice in a Modern World’ when giving in his well, as expected, brilliant presentation.

He told the attentive listeners mostly judges and magistrates during the conference, which takes place every three years that through the Mobile Courts’ initiative, marginalized communities in hard-to-reach areas have been empowered.

“The demigods and the so-called untouchables in remote villages who had hitherto thought they could not be reached by the arm of the law have automatically been forced out of their hideouts,” the CJ said.

According to him, Tanzania had learnt and adapted the Mobile Courts’ Model from Guatemala, which was customised by the Judiciary of Tanzania to suit its own needs.

The excitement was obvious as the CJ announced that Tanzania was planning to scale up the programme to cover even more areas and higher levels of the court particularly the District Court.

He said that all courts in Tanzania were going to be connected to the internet to facilitate electronic filing of cases, commonly referred to by the shorthand “e-filing”.

The conference opened by Vice President of Ghana, Alhaj Mahamud Bahamia on September 5, 2022, was attended by 25 Chief Justices and 350 delegates (Judges and Judges) from various countries of the Commonwealth of Nations and ended last Friday.