Leonora van den Heever
Leonora van den Heever was a judge of the High Court of South Africa. She was South Africa's first female judge and the first woman to be appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa.
Early life and education
Van den Heever was born in Windhoek, the daughter of the jurist and poet Toon van den Heever and Margaretha van den Heever. She attended the C&N Sekondêre Meisieskool Oranje in Bloemfontein, after which she completed her tertiary studies at the University of Pretoria, where she obtained, cum laude, her BA degree in English and Latin followed by a MA degree, cum laude, in English. She then taught at the Normaalkollege in Bloemfontein but, persuaded by her father, she temporarily started working as a judge's registrar and also began her LLB part-time through the University of the Orange Free State, graduating in 1951.Career
Van den Heever started practising as an advocate at the Bloemfontein Bar in 1952 and in 1968 she became a senior advocate. In 1969, she was appointed a judge in the Northern Cape Division, thus becoming the first female judge in South Africa. In 1979, she began to serve on the Bench of the Cape Provincial Division and from time to time during 1982 to 1985, she was part of the Bophuthatswana Court of Appeal.In 1991, she became the first female judge to be appointed permanently to the appellate division of the South African Supreme Court in Bloemfontein where she served until, she retired. After retiring at age 70, she agreed to some work in the Cape Provincial Division and served for a number of years on the Appeal Benches of Lesotho and Swaziland.