Chief Justice of South Africa

History and creation of the post

The position of Chief Justice as it stands today was created in 2001 by the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, as an amalgamation of two previous high-ranking judicial positions of Chief Justice and President of the Constitutional Court. The Chief Justice therefore now presides over the Constitutional Court. The position of the presiding judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa, the successor court to the Appellate Division, was as a consequence renamed President of the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Chief Justice in a new era

At the time of South Africa's democratization in the early 1990s, the position of Chief Justice was held by University of Cambridge graduate and World War II veteran Michael Corbett. Corbett took office in 1989, succeeding Chief Justice PJ Rabie, who had been scheduled to retire in 1986 at the statutory retirement age of 70, but had had his tenure in office extended ad hoc by President P.W. Botha. Leading South African jurisprudential author David Dyzenhaus regards this as one of the most significant examples of the way in which the National Party manipulated the country's judiciary to ensure that its decisions would be agreeable with the doctrine of Apartheid. According to Dyzenhaus, the only two natural successors to Rabie were both considered unfit for the job - one for being too "weak"; the other too "liberal".

However, with the fall of Apartheid imminent, the progressively-minded Corbett was eventually handed the job of Chief Justice in 1989. Although appointed by the National Party government, Corbett was generally well liked by those in South Africa's new African National Congress-led government, and upon his retirement in 1996 was given a formal state banquet where President Mandela paid tribute to the Chief Justice's "passion for justice", "sensitivity to racial discrimination", "intellectual rigour" and "clarity of thought".

The first Chief Justice to be appointed in post-apartheid South Africa was Ismail Mahomed, a leading South African jurist of Indian descent, who was selected to succeed Corbett in 1997 and eventually took office in 1998. Mahomed held the position until his death in 2000.

Under South Africa's Interim Constitution of 1993 and later the Final Constitution, the importance of the position of Chief Justice as the position of final judicial authority was temporarily relegated beneath that of the President of the newly created Constitutional Court. Ismail Mohammed had been tipped widely for the job of Constitutional Court President but in 1994, President Nelson Mandela appointed leading human rights lawyer and director of the Legal Resources Centre Arthur Chaskalson to the position. In 2001, after Mohammed's death and, consequently, with the position of Chief Justice vacant, the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa fused the positions of Chief Justice and President of the Constitutional Court into one single job of Chief Justice. Chaskalson was subsequently appointed to the new post, although his tasks remained effectively the same.

Chief Justices of Cape Colony

Source:

*1828 Supreme Court established

Chief Justices of Natal (1856–1910)

Chief Justices of Orange Free State (1875–)

Chief Justices of Transvaal (1877-1910)

Chief Justices of South Africa

1. 1910–1914 John de Villiers, 1st Baron de Villiers
2. 1914–1927 Sir James Rose Innes
3. 1927–1929 Sir William Henry Solomon
4. 1929–1932 Sir Jacob de Villiers
5. 1932–1936 Sir John Wessels
6. 1936–1938 John Stephen Curlewis
7. 1938–1939 James Stratford
8. 1939–1943 Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet
9. 1943–1950 Ernest Frederick Watermeyer
10. 1950–1957 Albert van der Sandt Centlivres
11. 1957–1959 Henry Allan Fagan
12. 1959–1971 Lucas Cornelius Steyn
13. 1971–1974 Newton Ogilvie Thompson
14. 1974–1982 Frans Lourens Herman Rumpff
15. 1982–1989 Pieter Jacobus Rabie
16. 1989–1996 Michael Corbett
17. 1998–2000 Ismail Mahomed
18. 2001–2005 Arthur Chaskalson
19. 2005–2009 Pius Langa
20. 2009–2011 Sandile Ngcobo
21. 2011– Mogoeng Mogoeng