KUDOS are due to Chief Justice Sakoane Sakoane for treating the timely administration of justice as the constitutional duty it is, rather than a distant ideal.
The Judicial Service Commission’s decision to advertise eight vacancies for judges of the High Court is a necessary intervention – a clear admission that the justice system can no longer function under an ever-growing caseload with too few judges to carry it.
Before Chief Justice Sakoane began expanding the Bench in 2021, the picture was bleak: just seven judges served the whole country, and cases piled up until the backlog passed 4,000. A justice system that leaves thousands of matters unresolved does more than slow down – it erodes public confidence in the rule of law. For many ordinary Basotho, going to court is already a costly, draining ordeal: legal fees, travel, and the anxiety of prolonged uncertainty. When a case then drags on for years, the promise of justice starts to ring hollow.
Chief Justice Sakoane deserves particular credit for recognising that the answer was never going to be squeezing more output from an already overwhelmed Bench. The institution itself needed more hands, and it needed a Chief Justice willing to say so publicly and push for it.
Today the High Court counts 14 substantive and five acting judges – 19 in total, a marked improvement on those original seven. Thirteen sit in Maseru, four in the Northern Division at Leribe, and two in the Southern Division at Mohale’s Hoek.
That progress is real, yet the fact that the JSC is now seeking eight more shows that building judicial capacity is not a once-off fix but ongoing work. If all eight posts are filled, the High Court will have 27 judges: five added in Maseru, two in Leribe and one more in Mohale’s Hoek. Spreading the growth this way is sensible – it reinforces existing divisions rather than concentrating everything in the capital, and it strengthens the Southern Division so that litigants there are spared the expense of travelling to Maseru for matters that could be heard closer to home.
But numbers alone will not fix the justice system. This is not work where competence can be separated from character: judges decide who loses property, who goes to prison, who is compensated and who is denied a right. That kind of power demands people whose professional skill is matched by integrity and even-handedness – which is why the JSC’s insistence on candidates of high moral standing matters as much as the recruitment drive itself.
There is also history behind why the process matters as much as the numbers. For years, the appointment of judges in Lesotho was a closed affair, decided quietly between the JSC and government with little public input. That opacity fed persistent claims, fair or not, that the Bench answered to the executive rather than the Constitution. Measured against that history, letting ordinary citizens and non-profit organisations nominate candidates is not a minor procedural tweak; it is a genuine break from custom. Widening the pool this way, combined with background checks and scrutiny of applicants’ professional standing, gives the public a real stake in who ends up wearing the robes. Publishing the names of applicants takes that a step further, allowing the same public to ask hard questions before an appointment is made rather than after.
Transparency, though, must not stop at the application stage. Basotho need confidence that appointments are made on merit alone, free of political, personal or factional influence – because a judiciary seen as beholden to any interest loses the public trust on which its authority ultimately rests. It is worth remembering, too, that the broader project of insulating the judiciary from executive influence – including how the JSC itself is composed and how much say government retains over appointments – remains tied up in Lesotho’s long-delayed constitutional reforms. The eight vacancies now advertised are a welcome, practical step forward, but they do not by themselves resolve those deeper structural questions about who ultimately controls judicial appointments.
Growing the Bench also has to be matched by improvements elsewhere in the chain, and by the resources to back the appointments up. New judges need courtrooms to sit in, registries capable of processing their caseloads, and administrative and support staff to keep matters moving between hearings. Without that groundwork, additional judges risk becoming additional names on a payroll rather than additional capacity in the system. More judges will not clear delays on their own if cases arrive poorly prepared, investigations crawl, or court administration remains inefficient. The goal must be a system in which matters are heard promptly, judgments are delivered without undue delay, and court orders are respected and enforced.
Chief Justice Sakoane has already shown some appetite for tackling that side of the equation. The Code of Ethics for Judges he promulgated in 2024, which requires judgments to be delivered within three months of a hearing and bars judges from presiding over matters where their impartiality could reasonably be questioned, points in the right direction. This recruitment drive should be read as part of that same broader effort to restore efficiency and credibility to the administration of justice, not as a stand-alone fix. Lesotho cannot afford a shortage of judges that leaves justice delayed – nor can it afford to appoint judges merely to pad the numbers at the expense of quality.
Getting this right means appointing enough judges to clear the backlog, filling those seats with men and women of unquestionable integrity, tightening court administration, and holding the whole system accountable for delivering justice on time. The advertisement of eight vacancies is a solid step in that direction, and it deserves the country’s support.
In the end, a democracy is measured not only by the laws it passes, but by whether an ordinary citizen can walk into a courtroom confident that their case will be heard, decided fairly, and concluded within a reasonable time. Chief Justice Sakoane has shown, over several years now, that he understands this. The task for the rest of the justice system – the JSC, the executive, and Parliament alike – is to match that understanding with the resources and the reforms needed to see it through.
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