Jody Kollapen is an acting Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from July 2017 and has served as a Judge of the High Court of South Africa, Gauteng Division, Pretoria, since 2011. He is also the Chairperson of the South African Law Reform Commission. Prior to his appointment as a Judge, Justice Kollapen served as the head of the South African Human Rights Commission. Justice Kollapen previously practised as an attorney and joined the organisation, Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) where he coordinated the “Release Political Prisoners” programme, which championed for the rights of political prisoners. In 1995, he was appointed National Director. While working as an attorney he worked on important cases such as Sharpeville Six and the Delmas Treason Trial. He was also a member of the selection panel that chose the Commissioners for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As a High Court Judge, some of Justice Kollapen’s celebrated judgments include Hennie and Others v Minister of Correctional Services and Others in which he granted an urgent interdict allowing prisoners to use laptops in their cells for study purposes. Justice Kollapen also presided in the Limpopo textbooks case in which he reprimanded the National Education Department and its Limpopo counterpart for its failure to deliver textbooks to schools in the province and handed down a structural order outlining deadlines for textbook deliveries. Justice Kollapen has previously served as a lecturer at the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria. Moreover, he has served on the board of many civil society organisations, including the Legal Resources Centre, the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, IDASA, and the London based Article 19.

Personal details

Fritz Brand and his wife, Elaine, currently lives in Bloemfontein. He has two sons and a daughter.

Education

Brand grew up in the Western and Northern Cape where he received his primary and secondary education. Over the period 1968-1974 he studied at the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Leyden in the Netherlands. He holds the qualifications BA LL.B and LLM (cum laude).

Professional history

Immediately after receiving his LL.B degree at the end of 1972, he was appointed as senior lecturer at the law faculty of the University of Stellenbosch where he taught until the end of 1976. In 1977 he joined the Cape Bar where he practiced as an advocate until September 1992. During that period he served on the Cape Bar Council for about ten years. In November 1989 he received his letters patent as a senior counsel (SC). In September 1992 he was appointed as a judge of the High Court in Cape Town. After serving as an acting judge of appeal at the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein in November 2000, he was appointed permanently to that court with effect from 1 December 2001. In 2010 he was appointed as an acting judge to the Constitutional Court for two terms, retaining his permanent position on the Supreme Court of Appeal bench.

Other involvements

Brand retained his interest in academic life. He has been a visiting lecturer at a number of universities in South Africa and abroad. On two occasions he also spent time as a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and Comparative Law in Hamburg, Germany. At present he is an Extraordinary Professor in Private Law at the University of the Free State.

Brand is Chair of the Vereniging Hugo de Groot, the body responsible for the Tydskrif vir Hedendaagse Romeins-Hollandse Reg. He has contributed to joint publications by South African and foreign lawyers, mainly from the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen in Scotland. He has also published in the South African Law Journal and in LAWSA, where he took responsibility for the titles Defamation and Enrichment in the current edition.

Brand is also interested in judicial education. For that purpose he has attended various courses and has conducted many seminars for judges in South Africa and in other African countries.

Judge Frank Kroon was born on 14 August 1941, in Graaff-Reinet. He matriculated at Union High school in 1958. in 1962 he obtained his B.Com degree, and, in 1963, his LL.B degree from the University of Cape Town.

He was admitted as an advocate in 1964 and served as a member of the Attorney-General’s staff in Grahamstown from 1964 to 1965. he was a member of the Eastern Cape Bar from 1965 to 1983, and a member of the Bar Council of the Eastern Cape from 1981 to 1983. Judge Kroon took silk on 11 November 1981.

He served as an Acting Judge of the Natal Provincial Division and Eastern Cape Division from 1983 to 1985. Since 1985 he has served as a Judge of the Eastern Cape Division. He was also a part time Judge of the Labour Appeal Court from 1997 to 1999. Judge Kroon was Chairman of the Board of the National English Literary Museum in Grahamtown from 1987 to 2003. he was also Chairman and sole member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Tsolo Violence in 1995.

Judge Kroon is married to Jennifer Ann. He has three children.