Mail & Guardian Reporter
APPELLATE Division Judge Joos Hefer, the champion of apartheid emergency legislation who called on Ismail Mahomed to withdraw from the race for chief justice, now has some unlikely spiritual allies across the Atlantic.
They are the black activists who tried, but failed, to prevent Margaret Marshall, a South African-born lawyer, from joining the High Court of Massachusetts in the United States.
Marshall’s nomination for the post by Massachusetts Governor William Weld angered black activists who said, quite simply, that Weld should have appointed a black American instead.
The most striking attack against her nomination came from Appeals Court Judge Frederick Brown who said: ”It is a regrettable day in the history of Massachusetts when a white person from South Africa is appointed to the Supreme Judicial Court before any black person.”
Marshall, who is a vice-president of and chief counsel for the University of Harvard, will now become the second woman to join the appeal court in its 300-year history.
l Professor Dennis Davis, advocate, television star and maverick commentator, has been made an acting judge in the Cape Supreme Court until December.