OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Saturday 6.00pm.
SOUTH Africa’s first black Chief Justice and one of the its foremost civil rights lawyers, Ismael Mohamed, died on Saturday in Johannesburg’s Linksfield clinic from cancer at the age of 68.
Mohamed, who became the country’s first black judge in 1991, was appointed chief justice in 1996 by then-president Nelson Mandela, and held the position until he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last February.
He was widely recognised as one of the most gifted orators at the South African bar, defending many anti-apartheid activists in political trials.
A legal adviser to Namibia’s ruling party Swapo, Mohamed was also the author of Namibia’s constitution, which abolished capital punishment.
He was considered a leading expert on administrative and constitutional law.
Upon his appointment as chief justice, Mahomed appealed to the entire judiciary for support in restoring the legitimacy and sovereignty of the law in the eyes of South Africa’s majority.
He stressed “the urgent need to salvage the image of the law.”
Born in Pretoria to a devout Muslim family, Mohamed studied law at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and joined the bar in 1957.
At the time, he was unable to rent chambers in the building housing the bar, because it fell into a white area under apartheid’s Group Areas Act. — AFP