Sibongile Ndashe
Sibongile Ndashe is a South African lawyer and human rights activist. She has been involved in public interest law since 1999 and has worked for several women's rights and human rights organisations. She founded the Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa in 2014 and has worked to help lawyers across Africa bring cases to court involving gender identity and sexual orientation. She supports the incremental decriminalisation of homosexuality. In October 2017 she was arrested in Tanzania on charges of "promoting homosexuality" whilst discussing ways to challenge a ban on HIV/AIDS treatment by private health clinics.
Career
Sibongile Ndashe has been involved in public interest law since 1999. Ndashe has B. Proc and Bachelor of Laws degrees from the University of the Western Cape. She began her career as an article clerk at the Legal Resources Centre, South Africa.In 2001 Ndashe worked under Johann Kriegler and Kate O'Regan as a research clerk at the Constitutional Court of South Africa. She was a legal adviser at the Women's Legal Centre from 2002 to 2007, where she focused on cases involving women's rights. Ndashe worked as a lawyer with the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights between 2007 and 2013. Whilst there she worked on cases across the Southern Africa region involving human rights, discrimination and cases before the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights.
Ndashe founded Initiative for Strategic Litigation in Africa in 2014 and serves as its executive director. ISLA and Ndashe offers legal advice to lawyers from countries across Africa. She is particularly keen to support regional and domestic movements to bring cases of sexual orientation and gender identity issues before the courts and wants an incremental decriminalisation of homosexuality. Ndashe helped to establish the African LGBTI Rights Lawyers Network to assist lawyers working on such cases and has supported LGTBI cases at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.