Personal details

Justice Sandile Ngcobo was born in Durban on 1 March 1953. He is married to Zandile and they have three children: a daughter, Nokwanda, and two sons, Ayanda and Manqoba.

Education

In 1975 Ngcobo graduated from the University of Zululand with a B Proc (Bachelor of Law), earning distinctions in constitutional law, mercantile law and accounting. From 1983 to 1985 he studied for an LLB at the University of Natal, Durban.

In 1985 he completed an orientation course on the United States' legal system, given by the International Law Institute at the Georgetown Law Center in Washington DC. From 1985 to 1986 he attended Harvard Law School, where he studied for an LLM. He concentrated on constitutional law, labour law, international legal process and international human rights.

Ngcobo was the beneficiary of a scholarship from Barclays Bank between 1973 and 1976. In 1985 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and in 1986 he was the recipient of a Harvard Law School Human Rights Fellowship.

Professional history

Ngcobo was in detention from 1976 to July 1977. From September 1977 to April 1978 he worked in the Maphumulo magistrate's office.

Ngcobo then joined KK Mthiyane and Company, a law firm in Durban. As an articled clerk and then as an associate attorney, he performed general law office work - such as registering corporations, advising corporate directors, administering deceased persons' estates and conducting criminal and civil trials.

In 1982 he moved to the Legal Resources Centre, also in Durban. Here, as an attorney at law, he tried public-interest civil and criminal cases involving issues such as the ejection of tenants from townships; the forced removal of black communities to homelands; influx control laws; police torture and assault; wrongful detentions; labour disputes; and the eviction of black squatters.

His Supreme Court experience involved preparing pleadings and briefs, and preparing cases for trial and appeal. Cases involved the unlawful transfer of teachers, the cancellation of black pupils' matriculation results and the cancellation of medical students' scholarships.

Then, from July 1986 to July 1987, Ngcobo spent a year as the law clerk and research associate of the late Honourable A Leon Higginbotham Jr, the former Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. Ngcobo's duties included researching and preparing legal memoranda on issues before the court. He also researched the role of law in American and South African societies, and, in particular, its use to perpetuate and eradicate social injustice.

Ngcobo also helped teach a seminar titled "Race Values and the American Legal Process" at the University of Pennsylvania, at Harvard Law School and at Stanford Law School.

From August to November 1987 Ngcobo was a visiting foreign attorney at Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He specialised in labour law.

At the beginning of 1988 he returned to South Africa and took up the post of acting director of the Legal Aid Services Clinic of the University of Natal, Durban. From August of that year he taught a course on race legislation, also at the University of Natal.

From December 1988 to November 1989 he practised as an advocate in Durban. But in December 1989 he returned to Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz in Philadelphia, where he was an associate attorney in a firm of about 300 lawyers. He specialised in labour and immigration law.

In 1992 Ngcobo returned to South Africa and practised as an advocate in Durban. His focus was labour and employment law, constitutional law and general practice. In 1994 he lectured part-time in constitutional litigation.

From April 1996 to the end of August that year, Ngcobo was an acting judge of the Supreme Court, Cape of Good Hope Provincial Division. In September 1996 he was made a judge of the same division. From January to December 1997 he was an acting judge of the Labour Appeal Court; in November that year he was appointed a judge of the court.

In 1999 Ngcobo was appointed the acting Judge President of the Labour Court and Labour Appeal Courts.

Other activities

Ngcobo was a member of the Industrial Court of KwaZulu in 1993. In the same year he was also the co-ordinator of the Equal Opportunities Project of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Natal, Durban.

In 1994 he was a presiding officer of the Independent Election Commission's Electoral Tribunal. Ngcobo was also appointed to serve on the amnesty committee of the Truth And Reconciliation Commission in February 1998.

He has served as a member and as the chairperson of the Rules Board for Courts of Law. In February 1999 the University of Cape Town made him an honorary professor of law.

Ngcobo has published many papers on topics such as justice, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, housing segregation and gender equality.

He is a trustee of the Dehler Foundation and is a former trustee of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies.

Service on the Constitutional Court

• Justice 1999 - 2009 Appointed by President Nelson Mandela
• Elevated by President Jacob Zuma to Chief Justice 2009 - 2011

JSC Interview
JSC Interview For Position of Chief Justice

Personal details
Kate O’Regan was born in Liverpool, England. She grew up in Cape Town. She obtained her B.A. from the University of Cape Town in 1978 and her LL.B. (cum laude) from the same university in 1980, an LL.M. from the University of Sydney with first class honours in 1981 and a Ph.D. from the University of London (London School of Economics) in 1988.

For four years in the 1980s she practised as an attorney in Johannesburg specialising in labour law and land rights law. During this period she acted for a wide range of trade unions, anti-apartheid organisations and several communities facing the threat of evictions under apartheid land policy.

In 1988, she joined the University of Cape Town Labour Law Unit as a researcher. In 1990, she became a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Law at UCT. Over the next five years, she was a founder member of both the Law, Race and Gender Research project and the Institute for Development Law at UCT. She was also an advisor to the African National Congress on land claims legislation, and to the National Manpower Commission on gender equality law. She also served as a trustee of the Legal Resources Trust.

In this period she edited (with Christina Murray) a book on forced removals and the law entitled No Place to Rest; as well as the IMSSA Arbitration Digest, a digest of labour arbitration decisions. She was also one of the authors of A Charter for Social Justice, a contribution to the South African Bill of Rights debate. She also wrote numerous articles that were published in academic journals.

In 1994, aged 37, she was appointed as a judge to the newly formed Constitutional Court. She has served as a judge of the Court since. Her term of office on the Court will end in October 2009. She acted as Deputy Chief Justice in the absence of Justice Moseneke from February to May 2008.

In 2008, she was appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations as chairperson of the newly established Internal Justice Council of the United Nations. The Council has been established to help ensure independence, professionalism and accountability in the internal administration of justice within the United Nations. One of the primary responsibilities of the Council is to identify suitable candidates for appointment as judges of the UN Dispute Tribunal and the UN Appeals Tribunal and to make recommendations to the General Assembly for the appointment of such judges. Her term of office is for four years.

She has continued her interest in academic teaching during her tenure as a judge. She has served as an honorary professor at the University of South Africa and is currently an honorary professor at the University of Cape Town. She has been awarded honorary doctorates by the University of KwaZulu-Natal (2000), the University of Cape Town (2004) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (2008). She is also an honorary bencher of Lincoln’s Inn (2007).

She has been an honorary consulting editor of the South African Law Reports since 1997 and serves on the editorial board of many South African legal publications.

Judge O’Regan is married to an advocate and they have two teenaged children.

Service on the Constitutional Court

• Justice 1994 - 2009

Former Justice Kate O'Regan Farewell video

Speeches
Why do we Value Equity: The Real for Equality Jurisprudence

Some thoughts on “Law and Justice”

LAWYERING IN OUR NEW CONSTITUTIONAL ORDER

THE CHALLENGE OF DIVERSITY

THE CHALLENGE OF CHANGE: THIRTEEN YEARS OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACYIN SOUTH AFRICA

JSC Interviews
JSC interview

Narrative

On turning six, during World War II, Albie Sachs received a card from his father expressing the wish that he would grow up to be a soldier in the fight for liberation.

His career in human rights activism started at the age of seventeen, when as a second year law student at the University of Cape Town, he took part in the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign. Three years later he attended the Congress of the People at Kliptown where the Freedom Charter was adopted. He started practice as an advocate at the Cape Bar aged 21. The bulk of his work involved defending people charged under racist statutes and repressive security laws. Many faced the death sentence. He himself was raided by the security police, subjected to banning orders restricting his movement and eventually placed in solitary confinement without trial for two prolonged spells of detention.

In 1966 he went into exile. After spending eleven years studying and teaching law in England he worked for a further eleven years in Mozambique as law professor and legal researcher. In 1988 he was blown up by a bomb placed in his car in Maputo by South African security agents, losing an arm and the sight of an eye.

During the 1980s working closely with Oliver Tambo, leader of the ANC in exile, he helped draft the organisation's Code of Conduct, as well as its statutes. After recovering from the bomb he devoted himself full-time to preparations for a new democratic Constitution for South Africa. In 1990 he returned home and as a member of the Constitutional Committee and the National Executive of the ANC took an active part in the negotiations which led to South Africa becoming a constitutional democracy. After the first democratic election in 1994 he was appointed by President Nelson Mandela to serve on the newly established Constitutional Court.

In addition to his work on the Court, he has travelled to many countries sharing South African experience in healing divided societies. He has also been engaged in the sphere of art and architecture, and played an active role in the development of the Constitutional Court building and its art collection on the site of the Old Fort Prison in Johannesburg.

Service on the Constitutional Court

• Justice 1994 - 2009

Former Justice Albie Sachs Farewell video

JSC Interviews
JSC interview

Justice Yvonne Mokgoro was a judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from its inception in 1994 until the end of her 15 year term in 2009

She was born in Galeshewe Township near Kimberley and matriculated at the local St Boniface High School in 1970. She studied mostly part-time, obtaining the Bachelor of Law (B.luris) degree at the University of Bophuthatswana, now North West University in 1982, the Bachelor of Law (LLB) two years later, and completed Master of Laws (LLM) in 1987. She also studied at the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, where she was awarded a second LLM degree in 1990

She started her work-experience as a nursing assistant and later as a retail sales-person before her appointment as a clerk in the Department of Justice of the erstwhile Bophuthatswana. After completion of the LLB she was appointed maintenance officer and public prosecutor in the then Mmabatho Magistrate's Court

In 1984, she was appointed lecturer in law in the Department of Jurisprudence, University of Bophuthatswana, where she rose through the ranks to Associate Professor and served there until 1991. From 1992 to 1993 she served as Associate Professor at the University of the Western Cape, from where she moved to the Centre for Constitutional Analysis at the Human Science Research Council, serving as Specialist Researcher (Human Rights), and also lecturing on a part time basis at the University of Pretoria, until her appointment to the Constitutional Court in October 1994.

Throughout her legal career she has taught a number of courses, including, Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law Jurisprudence, History of Law, Comparative Law, Criminal Law, Private Law and Customary Law at a number of universities in South Africa, the United Kingdom, the United States and Netherlands. She has written and presented papers and participated in a myriad of national and international conferences, seminars and workshops in South Africa and internationally, mainly in sociological jurisprudence and particularly on human rights, customary law, focussing on the impact of law on society generally, and on women and children specifically. She has served extensively as a resource person in this regard for non-governmental and community-based organisations and other initiatives in South Africa and internationally.

During her academic career, she has participated in a number of research projects and held positions on the boards of a number of civil society organisations, including community-based organisations :

She served on the Advisory Committee of the South African - Canadian Linkage Project, from its inception in 1994 until it ceased operations in 2004. From 1995-2005 she was President of Africa Legal Aid, (AFLA) a civil society organisation, which provides legal aid and human rights education throughout Africa and is based in Accra, Ghana, with satellite offices in Maastricht (Netherlands) and Pretoria (South Africa). She currently serves on a number of boards, and Trusts, including the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund which she chairs, Mandela-Rhodes Trust, the South African Institute where she heads the Curriculum Development, the International Committee Institute of Judicial Education, the South African Police Services (children’s) Education Trust (where she serves as Deputy Chairperson) and is a member of the African Centre for Justice Innovation (ACJI). She served as Chairperson of Venda University Council from 2002 to 2009.

She also served as Chairperson of the Selection Committee of the Press Council of South Africa which appoints the Press Ombudsperson and members of the Press Appeal Board. She is honorary (emeritus) Professor of Law at the University of the North, University of the Western Cape, University of Cape Town, University of Pretoria, and the University of South Africa. She has been conferred with the Doctor of Laws (Honoris Causa) by the University of North West, the University of KwaZulu-Natal, the University of Toledo (Ohio) USA, University of the Western Cape, University of Pretoria, University of the Witwatersrand (Wits),University of South Africa and the University of Pennsylvania (USA). She is a recipient of a number of other honours and awards, including the Educational Opportunities Council scholarship to study in the USA (1989-1990) the Women’s Law and Public Law Fellowship, by Georgetown University Law Centre, Washington DC (1990), the Human Rights Award by the Black Lawyers Association, (1995) the Oude Molen Reserve Order of Merit (1995/1996), the Legal Profession’s Woman Achiever Award by the Centre for Human Rights, and the University of Pretoria (2001), University of the North School of Law Excellence Award (2003), the Kate Stoneman Democracy Award (Albany Law School, New York, U.S.A (2003), the Tshwane Outstanding Service Award (TOSA) in 2006 and the James Wilson Award by the University of Pennsylvania Law School [(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (2008). She has also been appointed to serve as Special Ambassador for the University of Venda (University Council, 2009), and has been selected by the President of South Africa as an official Advocate for Social Cohesion in South Africa (2013-2018).

She holds membership of the International Women’s Association (Washington DC) and the International Association of Women Judges, the International Federation of Women Lawyers and the South African Women Lawyers Association, and in 2006 was selected as an icon of the history of Women Lawyers in South Africa.

She also served as Chairperson of the South African Law (Reform) Commission from 1995 until the end of a third term in 2011. She served as a Judge in the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) from 2011 to 2013 where her work entailed the exercise of oversight over the administration of the OCJ and the implementation of the OCJ mandate. In a nutshell the role of the OCJ entails the enhancement of the independence of the South African Judiciary as per Section 165 of the South African Constitution and supportive laws

In January 2012, she was appointed as Chairperson of the Independent Panel of Experts to investigate the circumstance of the incident in (stampede) that occurred at the University of Johannesburg South Africa during the student’s registration and which resulted in the death of a parent, reporting to the University Council.

She is also been appointed in 2013 to chair a Tribunal which will investigate the ethical conduct of the President of the Lesotho Court of Appeal. The investigation is currently on-going

Service on the Constitutional Court

• Justice 1994 - 2009

Former Justice Yvonne Farewell Mokgoro video

Speeches

Protecting the Children

LEGAL EDUCATION AND TRAINING: ACCESS TO JUSTICE

The Critical Challenges of Nation Building in South Africa Today

JSC Interview

JSC interview