Simon Jiyane

Vice President - Africa

A Professional Manager and Court Consultant of repute based on his long and illustrious career in all spheres of Courts in South Africa, having started as a Prosecutor, Presiding Magistrate, State Advocate and eventually appointed to Head of the Court Services Branch within the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development in South Africa.

He is the former Deputy Director General in the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development and has almost twenty six years of experience in court and judicial reforms in South Africa since after the dawn of democracy. 
His extensive knowledge and experience in the management of courts is unsurpassed. As the Head of Court Services, he managed a budget of ± R5 billion. Some of the changes he introduced in the Department is the premium project, called Re Aga Boswa (Rebuilding the court administration), which was meant to overhaul all business processes in the Courts to make them effective and efficient, through the introduction and the appointment of Court Managers in the South African Courts. The appointment of the High Courts’ Registrars to assist the judiciary in caseflow management. The introduction of Case- Flow Management in all Courts in South Africa was one of his personal projects to improve the management of cases at Court level.

Adv Jiyane is a highly motivated leader, who combines skills of good leadership and organisational performance. He performs very effectively under a diverse cultural background of the personnel who make up the face of any organisation. He is a good motivator to any person in an organisation, irrespective of one’s station in life. He has had always cordial working relationships with the judiciary and all stakeholders in Courts.

He is the founder member of the African Centre for Justice Innovation (ACJI) whose main purpose is to strengthen and advance governance, leadership and management efforts of Courts and the justice sector stakeholders that inspire pubic trust and confidence in the administration of justice in Africa.

He is also the founder and the Interim President of Pan African Court Management Association, whose objectives are to serve as an Association that will promote the professional management of the Courts in the African Continent and become a Centre of Excellence from which all Courts can draw from as a resource for different skills, knowledge and experience required in the management of Courts.

Adv Jiyane is the founder and the Managing Director of the Pan African Court Management Consulting (Pty) Ltd, which specialises in the development of strategies for Courts, re-engineering of Courts’ business processes and the training of all Court Support Personnel.

He once served as the Vice President of the UN Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime during 2006. In his professional career he had attended many training courses, including but not limited to Ethics for Effective Judicial Reforms in Singapore and Improving Case-Flow Management systems and Advanced Court Management Research Methods at the National Centre for State Courts Institute for Court Management in the USA during 2001/02.

He was the Chairperson of the Development Committee in the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster (commonly known as JCPS) responsible for the development and coordination of all strategy and policy issues of the Criminal Justice System in South Africa. He had been much involved in the creation of an integrated justice system to support all the constituent Departments of Justice, Crime Prevention and the Security Cluster.

Contact:   [email protected]