Plan to ward off frivolous litigation

IN AN effort to ward off high volumes of litigation, the Department of Home Affairs has embarked on a process to hire legally qualified people to be posted at its civic services and immigration affairs directorates.

“The capacity of the department has been strengthened. We recently created posts for the core business in immigration and civic to have a legal person to deal with any matter relating to ligation,” said the deputy director-general for civic services, Vusumuzi Mkhize.

“The posts have been advertised and we hope those people will monitor matters related to litigation on the core business,” Mkhize said.

He made the comments following the closure of the department’s offices in Mbombela, Mpumalanga, after the sheriff of the court attached its goods in May.

A foreigner took the department to court for wrongful arrest, and was granted a default judgement of R150 000, which the department is now seeking to rescind.

According to Thulani Mavuso, the deputy director-general for institutional planning and support, the department was slapped with about 50 litigation cases every week.

“On a weekly basis we have to respond and instruct state attorneys to defend matters. Some of them are opportunistic litigations,” Mavuso said.

He said the high volume of litigation was creating huge administrative issues.

“When you scan through those cases, the majority are issues that are opportunistic rather than real issues that we are supposed to be defending.”

In a parliamentary question, the department revealed that it had spent R46.3 million on legal costs in 2011/2012.