Pretoria - While the country celebrated Women’s Day yesterday, the legal advocacy group, Judges Matter, paid tribute to the 100 years of women in the legal profession.
April this year marked 100 years since women were allowed to enter the legal profession as practitioners.
For women’s month, the group celebrates and salutes women pioneers in the judiciary and highlights some of the progress made.
In 1994, there were only two women on the Bench, both of them white: Judges Leonora van den Heever and Jeanette Traverso. The first black woman judge was Johannesburg Judge Mokgadi Mailula, appointed in 1994, followed by Constitutional Court Justice Yvonne Mokgoro.
Based on February 2023 statistics from the Judiciary Annual Report 2021/22, there are currently 253 judges in the superior courts including the Constitutional Court, Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) and high court, and specialist courts. Of the 253, about 113 are women – some 45% of the total.
Judges Matter said in its tribute that while there have been tremendous strides towards achieving gender parity in the judiciary broadly, but there was still a gap at the judicial leadership level, where women were under-represented by far.
Justice Mandisa Maya was the first black woman appointed to the SCA in 2002. She would later become the first black woman deputy president (2015-17) and subsequently president of that court (2017-22).
Later last year she was appointed the first woman Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa. Her successor at the SCA appointed this year is also a woman, Justice Mahube Molemela.
Judge Monica Leeuw became the first woman judge president of a high court in 2010, when she was appointed to lead the North West High Court. Since then, only three other high divisions have been led by women: Free State (Judge Mahube Molemela, 2018-21), KZN (Judge Thoba Poyo-Dlwati, 2023-present) and Mpumalanga (Judge Segopotje Mphahlele, 2023-present).
Another head of court, Judge Lebogang Modiba, is the first woman president of the Special Tribunal, a specialised judicial body to recover public money lost to fraud, corruption and maladministration.
The advocacy group said several women judges currently hold deputy judge president positions, which is a secondary layer of judicial leadership that is essential to the functioning of the high courts across the country.
These are Judge Martha Mbhele (Free State), Judge Matsaro Semenya (Limpopo), Judge Violet Phatshoane (Northern Cape), and Judge Patricia Goliath (Western Cape). Mpumalanga DJP Judge Mphahlele was recently promoted to judge president.
It stated that no reliable statistics exist for the racial and gender composition of the magistracy in 1994, but as of June last year, 51% of magistrates were women and 75% were black.
At the leadership level, four of the eight permanent regional court presidents who head up regional courts in alll nine provinces are women. Of the 16 chief magistrates, 10 are women. “This means that the lower court judiciary is doing far better in getting women in leadership positions than the superior courts,” Judges Matter said.
It said gender parity in the judiciary was not just an aspiration. “Without it, the justice system will remain weakened and our principles of equality before the law will remain in question. The role of these women cannot be understated,” the group said.
Pretoria News