Pius Langa
Pius Nkonzo Langa SCOB was Chief Justice of South Africa from June 2005 to October 2009. Formerly a human rights lawyer, he was appointed as a puisne judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa upon its inception in 1995. He was the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa from November 2001 until May 2005, when President Thabo Mbeki elevated him to the Chief Justiceship. He was South Africa's first black African Chief Justice.
The son of a Zulu pastor, Langa left school as a teenager to enter the workforce. Over the next two decades, he studied for his matric certificate while working in a clothing factory and then studied for his legal qualifications while working as a civil servant in the Department of Justice. He left the civil service at the rank of magistrate in 1977, when he was admitted as an advocate. Thereafter he practised law in Durban, specialising in the defence of anti-apartheid activists accused of political offences. He was a member of the United Democratic Front and the president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1988 to 1994. During the same period, he attended the negotiations to end apartheid as a member of the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress.
Shortly after he took silk in January 1994, Langa was appointed to the newly established Constitutional Court by post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela. In August 1997, Mandela additionally appointed him as the court's second Deputy President; his title was changed to Deputy Chief Justice after the Sixth Constitutional Amendment was passed in November 2001. On 1 June 2005, he succeeded Arthur Chaskalson as Chief Justice, a position which he held until his mandatory retirement in October 2009.
Leading the court during a period of political turmoil, Langa was widely respected for his mild and conciliatory manner, though he was also subject to criticism from both populist and conservative quarters. In particular, he is remembered for leading the court in lodging a controversial misconduct complaint against Judge John Hlophe, who was accused of attempting to interfere with the Constitutional Court's judgment in the politically sensitive matter of Thint v National Director of Public Prosecutions.
Early life and education
Langa was born on 25 March 1939 in Bushbuckridge in the former Transvaal Province. He was the second of seven siblings, with four brothers and two sisters. Their father, Simon Peter Langa, was a Zulu-speaking charismatic preacher from Natal, whose work for the Pentecostal Holiness Church had brought the family to Bushbuckridge temporarily. Their mother was Swazi, and, because their father's work required frequent travel, Langa learned several other South African languages as a child. The family left Bushbuckridge during his infancy and spent several years in various parts of the Northern Transvaal, primarily in Pietersburg, until in 1949 they settled in Stanger, Natal.Langa attended primary school in Stanger and then completed two years of secondary education, in 1954 and 1955, at Adams College in Amanzimtoti. He later called his sojourn at Adams College "one of the earliest miracles in my life": his parents could not afford to pay for his secondary education, but he received a bursary to attend the college, where his elder brother, Sam, was a trainee teacher. At the end of 1955, then aged 16, he left school with a first-class junior certificate to find a job in the urban centre of Durban.
Early career: 1956–1977
Clothing factory
Langa spent 1956 unemployed in Durban, looking for work and "struggling" with government administrators over their application of the pass laws: because his dompas recorded his home district as Bushbuckridge, he was not allowed to live in Natal while unemployed. He was deeply affected by this early experience of the "ugliness" of apartheid, later writing in a submission to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that, "In that first flush of youth, I had thought I could do anything, aspire to anything and that nothing could stop me. I was wrong."Though he had initially hoped to find a clerical job, Langa was finally employed at a clothing factory in early 1957. The factory made shirts and he was tasked with distributing textiles among the machinists. In his spare time, he studied independently for his matric exams, which he passed at the end of 1960.
Civil service
After matriculating, Langa joined the Department of Justice in a low-level position, serving as a court interpreter and messenger. Over the next 17 years, he worked continuously in a series of magistrate's courts across Natal, beginning with nine months in rural Impendle, then several years in Harding, and then stints in Camperdown, Howick, Stanger, and Ndwedwe. During his early years as an interpreter and clerk, he developed "a growing love for law as a means of solving at least some of the problems that confronted our people", and he became convinced that a legal education was a prerequisite to influencing the justice system.In 1970, he enrolled in a part-time correspondence program at the University of South Africa, and he graduated with a BJuris in 1973 and an LLB in 1976. At the same time, with his BJuris degree, he rose through the ranks of the magistrate's offices, becoming a prosecutor and then a magistrate.
Family life
During the same period, Langa occasionally spent time at his family home in KwaMashu, a township outside Durban. His three younger brothers were all active in the student anti-apartheid movement, and in the mid-1970s, during the era of the Soweto uprising, the house became "a hotbed" for their activist activities and sometimes for Special Branch raids. Because his brothers and their friends were adherents of Black Consciousness politics, while he was attracted to the non-racialism of the rival Charterist faction, Langa "regarded it as my function to debate with them" about politics.Langa's father died in 1972 and his mother in 1984. Two of his younger brothers, Bheki and Mandla, left South Africa for exile in the aftermath of the Soweto uprising; they ultimately became a diplomat and a novelist respectively. The third, Ben, was assassinated in 1984 by his comrades in the African National Congress, who wrongly believed that he had become a police informant. According to Mark Gevisser, Langa's moral opposition to capital punishment was such that he called publicly for the killers to be spared the death penalty, though they were hanged anyway.
Legal practice: 1977–1994
After completing his LLB, Langa left the civil service and returned to Durban, where he was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa in June 1977. He practised at the Natal Bar for the next 17 years, with a varied practice but an overwhelming focus on political trials brought under apartheid legislation. While he was junior counsel, he was frequently briefed by his close friend Griffiths Mxenge, and he worked under silks including George Bizos and Ismail Mahomed; he and Dikgang Moseneke were Bizos's junior counsel in 1991 when Bizos defended Winnie Madikizela-Mandela against the charge of kidnapping Stompie Seipei. Langa's other activist clients included Patrick Maqubela, Jeff Radebe, Penuell Maduna, Nceba Faku, and Tony Yengeni, whom he defended against charges ranging from public violence to sabotage, treason, and murder. He also represented various civic bodies and trade unions.Although Langa "kept a professional distance from the ANC", which was banned at the time, he was personally involved in various offshoots of the anti-apartheid movement. Among other things, he was a member of the executive committee of the Democratic Lawyers Association, an affiliate of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and then became a founding member of its successor organisation, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. He served as NADEL's national president from 1988 to 1994. In addition, he was a longstanding member of the United Democratic Front, having attended the launch of the front in Mitchells Plain in August 1983.
By the late 1980s, Langa was a member of the ANC's Constitutional Committee, which was preparing to negotiate a constitutional dispensation for post-apartheid South Africa. In this capacity, he worked on the party's draft bill of rights, which was ultimately incorporated into Chapter Two of the Constitution of South Africa. He also represented the ANC at the negotiations to end apartheid, both during pre-negotiations at Groote Schuur and Pretoria and during formal multi-party talks at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa and Multi-Party Negotiating Forum. After the National Peace Accord was signed, he was appointed to the Police Board, which was tasked with overseeing the South African Police's conduct during the political transition. During the same period, in January 1994, he was appointed as Senior Counsel.
Constitutional Court: 1995–2009
After the first post-apartheid elections of April 1994, newly elected President Nelson Mandela appointed Langa to the inaugural bench of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, which was newly established under the Interim Constitution. The bench was sworn in on 14 February 1995.''''''Deputy Chief Justice
In August 1997,' President Mandela appointed Langa to succeed Ismail Mohamed as the Deputy President of the Constitutional Court, in which capacity he deputised Justice President Arthur Chaskalson. He held that position until November 2001,' when, under the restructuring of the judiciary occasioned by the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, he and Chaskalson became Deputy Chief Justice and Chief Justice respectively. According to Justice Johann Kriegler, Langa worked closely with Chaskalson as his "understudy".Chief Justice
Nomination
As Chaskalson's retirement approached, many observers believed it was a foregone conclusion that Justice Dikgang Moseneke would succeed Chaskalson as Chief Justice. However, Langa was also viewed as a frontrunner. Because Chaskalson took leave in late 2004, he was already serving as Acting Chief Justice, and some members of the governing ANC, including Justice Minister Penuell Maduna and Deputy Justice Minister Johnny de Lange, apparently preferred Langa's Charterist political background to Moseneke's Black Consciousness history.In March 2005, President Thabo Mbeki announced that Langa was his preferred candidate for the Chief Justice post. In his interview with the Judicial Service Commission in Cape Town the following month, Langa was asked about racism and demographic transformation in the judiciary; he dismissed reports that he had a "gradualist" approach to demographic transformation, instead describing his approach as "revolutionary". The Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, announced after the interview that it would support Langa's appointment. The appointment was confirmed by Mbeki and he took office as Chief Justice on 1 June 2005, with Moseneke as his deputy.