SA seeks to slash foreign language services

In a bid to curtail spiralling costs, the South African Department of Justice (DoJ) is proposing that the number of languages for which court interpreters are provided be slashed to just the 12 official languages, French and Portuguese. It emerged last week that the department had in the past three financial years spent nearly $9.7m procuring interpretation services for foreigners who say they do not understand English or any other local language. The Sunday Times reports that the move is likely to meet resistance from local NGOs that advocate for the rights of immigrants. DoJ DG Doctor Mashabane last week told the Justice Portfolio Committee some foreign nationals who fell foul of the justice system claimed in court that they did not understand proceedings. The department says the millions of rand spent on securing interpreters could better be spent on ensuring access to courts for victims of crime. Mashabane said the department was drafting a proposal to amend the law to limit the number of foreign languages catered for.

The Deputy DG responsible for court administration, Charles Mohalaba, told the Sunday Times that since 1994 courts have been accommodating foreigners who ‘allege’ they do not understand English or any of the other official languages. Foreign language services or interpreters would be procured for them in a language that they understand and/or ‘choose to understand’, even if it is an obscure dialect from a small geographic area of their country of origin. ‘Sometimes, such dialects or languages are not the recognised or formal languages in the courts of the countries of origin, and therefore the government of SA is giving persons of foreign origin more language rights in SA than they have in their own country,’ said Mohalaba. Section 35(3)(k) of the Constitution provides that every accused person has a right to a fair trial, which includes the right to be tried in a language the person understands or, if that is not practicable, to have the proceedings interpreted in that language. The need to find an interpreter has led to enormous backlogs in the courts. Sometimes the department has to find an interpreter in the country that the accused comes from. Mohalaba said the $9.7m spent on interpreters over the past three years included air fares and accommodation for such language experts. In April, prosecutors in the trial of Ukraine-born Igor Russol, who is co-accused alongside Mark Lifman, Jerome Booysen and 11 others for murder, wanted to separate his trial because no Russian interpreter was available. At the 11th hour Russol said he could understand English, and did not need an interpreter. The department says it has obtained legal opinion from the chief state law adviser about amending the section of the Magistrates Courts Act that deals with an accused’s right to an interpreter. Mbekezeli Benjamin, a legal researcher and advocacy officer at Judges Matter, said the constitutional right to be tried in a language an accused understands was one of the vital protections of the right to a fair trial. ‘Like many constitutional rights, it may come at some expense to the state, and the state is obligated to foot this bill,’ he said.

Full Sunday Times report