HON. ROSEMELLE MUTOKA

For Nairobi Trial Magistrate Hon Rosemelle Mutoka, every day in court comes with its own peculiarities. “Each day is unique. You meet people of all walks of life,” she says. But she takes all cases and the attendant challenges in her stride. “What is satisfying is seeing the satisfaction on the faces of the people we serve,”

she says. Although she admits that job of a judicial officer comes with different challenges, but adds that these are not unique to women. Given the chance, she would like to change the way things are done in the Judiciary to ensure better and faster services.

“We still use long hand and I’ve never understood why no one has addressed this. But I also realise that this is not the only country facing that challenge and, again, it’s a question of priorities. But we are in the IT age and that is the future.”

She challenges women officers in the Judiciary to work hard to execute their objectives in order to be taken seriously.

“I don’t believe someone will try to put me down because I’m a woman. Women say ‘we are sat on, we are not liked…’ What are you doing about it? If I have to work twice, thrice or four times as hard as a man to achieve, I’ll do it. I’ll not want to achieve it because I’m a woman but if everyone else is achieving, then I must also achieve,”

she says. Women judicial officers have been accused of not performing to their maximum but Hon Mutoka refutes this claim saying that it stems from an attitude that the public has about women.“You know we are mothers, and have to play the dual role of mothers and judicial officers, but there is no evidence that those women who are not married perform better than those who are.”

She recalls her appointment to the Judiciary some 20 years ago with pride, owing to the way she was able to perform her duties while still nursing a newborn baby. She would take the baby with her to the court precincts with a maid and leave them in the car. then she would use any free time she could get to attend to the baby and go back to court. She overcame that hurdle with the passage of time and now looks back with pride. She however concedes that juggling duties as a family person and officer is not easy.

“It’s not easy; your children don’t think you are a judicial officer. I remember a time when I was a magistrate in Kibera and I had a hearing late in the evening and my daughter who was in nursery school, after waiting for me in the car in vain, walked into the court then she strolled to the front and said, ‘Mum, us we are going home’ and then she turned and walked away,” she narrates with a chuckle.

She says she did not have a burning desire to pursue a career in law but what drove her to become a magistrate is the same determination that saw her through school. “I’m one determined person. that’s what drives me. I’ve satisfaction in knowing that I’ve done something different. It could be competition; I say if somebody can do it, so can I. I can even do it better.”

So why did she study law? “I’m very argumentative. As a little girl I was very argumentative and my father kept saying, this one is going to be my lawyer. My father had a very big role in it – and my character.”

She would like to see a woman Chief Justice and more women in the Judiciary, especially in the Court of Appeal, but she calls for balanced proportions in relation to their male counterparts.

“there has to be policy; if it is affirmative action, so be it. Personally, I don’t believe in affirmative action but there has to bedeliberate policy. It’s like this; if they are all qualified and you have three chances, you can say let’s give two to women and one to a man,” she says. Hon Mutoka wears many hats. As a member of the Kenya Women Judges Association, she is the secretary of the Jurisprudence of Equality Programme. JEP is a project designed to prepare judicial officers to apply international, regional and national human rights norms to cases coming before them in their courts, including gender-based discrimination and violence. the project was begun in 1995 under the auspices of the International Women Judges Foundation.

She is also a member of the Kenya Magistrates and Judges Association where she has been secretary since 2005. She takes pride in the current developments in the Judiciary, some of which she attributes to the two associations’ efforts . One of the things the magistrate celebrates is the success of last year’s Judiciary Open Day, which she says helped demystify the administration of justice by explaining to the public and other stakeholders the workings of the justice system.

The two associations are engaged in various projects aimed at bringing together judicial officers and the public so that each of them knows the role they need to play to enable the system work.

“We are also working with other professional organisations such as the International Commission of Jurists and the Law Society of Kenya to enhance the administration of justice.”

Asked what she would change in the Judiciary if she had the powers she says she’d being with basic things like computerisation. “I don’t understand why we are still using long hand to write judgments. I’ve not understood why no one wants to change that,” she says.

According to her, the least the Judiciary administration can do is to ensure that people have computers and are computer literate so that their work is made easier, not just in court but also in the chambers. “We seem to do things the old way, and it is so cumbersome.”

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