It was third time lucky for a group of 20 inmates who had over the past six weeks turned to court three times in a bid to be heard, but on the first two occasions nobody would lend them an ear, before a sympathetic judge agreed to take on their case.

Stephen Langa and 19 of his co-accused at Leeuwkop Prison turned to the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg in an urgent bid to get answers as to why they have not been considered for parole.

All 20 are serving life imprisonment terms and said they have already served the time expected of them in law, before becoming eligible to be considered for parole. Yet they are not being considered by the Parole Board.

On the first two occasions judges simply removed their matter from the urgent court roll, as the applications were deemed not up to scratch by the judges. Even the office of the State Attorney, who had to act on behalf of the minister of correctional services and other related departments to defend the action, did not bother to do so.

But Judge Stuart Wilson has now decided to lend them an ear and to place the matter before himself for future case management.

While the inmates had brought the applications as lay people, without the help of a lawyer, and it was difficult from their court papers to ascertain exactly what their complaint was, Judge Wilson took the time to establish it.

He commenced that whether or not the complaints turn out to have any merit, claims of this nature generally require the most serious and anxious consideration, because the person advancing them, being incarcerated, is inherently vulnerable.

“Save in exceptional circumstances, it is not appropriate to remove a lay litigant’s application from the urgent roll. Every effort must be made to ascertain the nature of the complaint. If the complaint is urgent, it must be dealt with fairly on its merits.”

He added that a simple removal of these matters from the roll generally achieves nothing. “It is no more than an encouragement to a lay litigant to re-enroll the matter in the next urgent court, making their case part of the next urgent judge’s burden.”

While the application papers were not easy to decipher, it turned out following questions by the judge to Langa, that these prisoners complained that they had completed the non-parole period of their sentences, but were being denied the opportunity to apply for parole.

“Once the nature of the complaint has been established, it is necessary to hear from the authorities responsible for the applicant’s detention. In this case, that was impossible because there was no appearance from the Minister of Correctional Services. Without input from the Minister, it is impossible to determine whether Mr. Langa has correctly identified the complaint and whether that complaint has any merit,” the judge said.

He added that if the state of the applicants’ court papers might have led the State Attorney to believe that the application was not worth defending, that was a mistake.

“Where an incarcerated individual complains about the lawfulness of their detention, or the conditions in which they are being kept, it is incumbent upon the Minister and his legal representatives to take the complaint seriously, even if, in their view, it has no merit.”It is unfortunate that this did not happen in this case, Judge Wilson said.

He postponed the matter indefinitely but ordered that Correctional Services had to shed more light on the circumstances of these prisoners.

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