Case Enrolment

Overview

This is a process whereby a case or an application is enrolled for a hearing for adjudication by the Judge.

Who is eligible?

Any party who has a case or an application before the court and the said case is ready in all forms; with pleadings filed and closed.

How do I get this service?

In order to have an application enrolled for a hearing, follow the steps below:

Confirm that pleadings are closed; in that all that needs to be filed has indeed been filed and the case is ready for trial.
Application is enrolled for a hearing on a date to be decided upon by the court.
The hounourable judge and the Bench Clerk assesses cases/ applications before them through a process called Case management, to determines those that are ready for hearing on their applications.
After the assessment and the sorting stage, the bench clerk will then identify suitable dates from the Judges Diary and slot cases accordingly. After the slotting, the bench clerk will proceed to issue notices of set down and send them to the addresses provided by the parties. After this, the bench clerk will then prepare a court roll for the particular month.
The court roll is then submitted to the Registrar’s office for consolidation into the Court’s Composite roll.
The bench clerk will then prepare pleadings for the Judge and the nominated members, and have them ready a week before the trial date.
The case will then be placed before the judge in preparation for trial. On the trial date, the bench clerk will check the parties’ attendance against the court roll for the day and presents the interpreters brief to the litigants. During trial, the bench clerk offers interpretation of the court proceedings from English to Setswana and vice versa to the litigants that are not comfortable in the English language, as court proceedings are conducted in the English language.
The court will then hear the case on the date set and make its determination.

What supporting documents are required?

None at this stage because the understanding is that all relevant documents would have been filed before enrollment.

How long will this service take?

This is dependent on what the case registered matures into;

If it’s a default hearing which can take up to 6 months to be enrolled for hearing.
If it’s a full hearing which can take up to 2 years to be enrolled for hearing.

Depending on the application that has been set down, the number of days that a case takes for trial is also dependent on the number of witnesses each party want to call. A trial can be set for 1 day, 2 days, 3 days or even for a week.