Chief Justice Zondo speaks to PSL

“We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.”

— Preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996

“I think my journey towards choosing to study law started in my history class at secondary school,” says Chief Justice Zondo, speaking to Public Sector Leaders. “... and during those years, one studied about the French Revolution. One studied about the struggles of various people in different parts of the world. And I found that, very often, the prominent leaders in various struggles - where people struggled for freedomwere lawyers.”

Victoria Mxenge. Nelson Mandela. Priscilla Jana. Joe Slovo. Oliver Tambo. Felicia Kentridge. George Bizos. The list goes on.

Before law, he had thoughts of becoming a teacher or a priest, and had attended a Roman Catholic boarding school, St Mary’s Seminary. “But once I had settled my mind on law, I never looked back.”

The Chief Justice was raised in Ixopo. One of nine children, his mother lost her job just a couple of years before he matriculated. When the opportunity came for him to go to university, he was faced with the challenge of his family being left to struggle without him. Suleman “Solly” Bux, a local entrepreneur, was kind enough to provide him with a loan and allow the Chief Justice’s mother to come into his store once a month, for the duration of his studies, in order to choose groceries.

Initially it had been a loan, but once he had completed his undergraduate studies, Suleman Bux asked for nothing in return, other than to pay it forward to those in need. The two would be reunited years later, for the Zondo and Bux Educational Trust, to do exactly that. Chief Justice Zondo went on to complete multiple degrees: B. luris; LLB; LLM in labour law; LLM in commercial law and an LLM in patent law.

Derechos humanos. That is the Spanish term Bartolomé de las Casas gave to what we know as ‘human rights’. On April the 27th, 1994, South Africa realised this conception of what was owed to us all. This was almost four hundred years after the Dominican friar and priest had become what one may call the first advocate of human rights.

On that day, South Africans gave life to the idea that we can build a world that we both want and need. Already in the early 1900s, the efforts to codify human rights was being explored in South Africa. The Freedom Charter of 1955 took this even further and through the negotiating process of the early 90s, a compromise was reached which has given us the Constitutional Court, the keepers of the world-renowned Constitution which the creators hoped would heal the past and ensure that it is never repeated.

The people who played a role in drafting the Constitution were working in the spirit that Bartolomé de las Casas embodied when he said, “All the peoples of the world are humans, and there is only one definition of all humans and of each one, that is that they are rational.” This assertion of everyone’s humanity, and the need to protect that, inspired a court that stands as a standard-bearer for stellar public institutions. Its home, Constitution Hill, in Braamfontein, carries a piece of Johannesburg which the Constitutional Court judges specifically chose in order to face history head on - to not forget - and heal the wounds of the past. Built in 1893, the Old Fort –formerly the Johannesburg Jail –is just seven years older than the city itself; the prison was later fortified to protect against invasion, a result of the struggle to control mineral reserves.

“Hundreds of thousands of people were jailed there - including figures such as Mahatma Gandhi, and Albert Luthuli. Nelson Mandela paid the Fort a visit first as a young lawyer, then as a prisoner and finally as the president of South Africa,” reads the Constitutional Court’s website. South Africa’s stature as one of Africa’s leading economies is tied closely to the story of gold and labour. At the head of the court, which sits atop all the history Constitution Hill holds, is Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, democratic South Africa’s 6th head of the judiciary. Chief Justice Zondo has had profound influence on labour law in South Africa, and was inspired by lawyers such as Nelson Mandela, who had fought for human rights.

The Chief Justice began cutting his legal teeth at the Legal Resource Centre in eMpangeni, which is perhaps the story of where his contribution to South African labour law, and South African history, begins.

In 1979, Felicia Kentridge and Arthur Chaskalson - who later became the second Chief Justice post1994 - founded the Legal Resource Centre, which former Constitutional Court judge Justice Cameron described as “a pioneering firm of public interest lawyers, which gained and has sustained enduring international admiration for its work.” Along with John Dugard’s Centre for Applied Legal Studies (CALS) at Wits University - which gave anti-apartheid lawyers a sharper, academic edge - lawyers such as a young Justice Cameron contributed to a labour-related legal battle which gave rise to a new form of resistance, exemplifying what Chief Justice Zondo so admired about lawyers: They advocated for the rights of other humans.

“The apartheid government thought that by drawing workers into the labour relations structures it created, it could contain them. It was wrong,” writes Justice Cameron, in his book Justice: A Personal Account.

“It had let the genie of mass activism out of the bottle. By working within the new system of labour protections, the unions did far more than only secure legal rights. Strengthened by repeated court victories under the new law, they became joint leaders of the mass internal activist alliance that swept the country from the mid-1980s. They and other activist organisations were at the forefront of insisting on equal rights for all in a democratic South Africa.”

Chief Justice Chaskalson, and the lawyers at the LRC, chipped away at apartheid’s legal basis. After his short time at the LRC in what was then known simply as Natal, the Chief Justice joined Victoria Mxenge’s law firm as a candidate attorney. The firm did not have a labour department and the Chief Justice’s experience in the field allowed Mrs Mxenge to trust that he was capable of creating one for them.

“She showed a lot of confidence in me by simply saying, ‘We don’t know this field of law, you take charge and just make sure everything’s done right.’” Once he was admitted as an attorney, he practised for a number of years as a partner in a law firm, Mathe and Zondo Incorporated. He also worked part-time as a mediator and arbitrator. The Commission of Inquiry into State Capture was not the first high profile commission he was involved in. In the early 90s, he sat on two committees of the Commission of

Inquiry Regarding the Prevention of Public Violence and Intimidation, which was popularly known as the Goldstone Commission (after the Chair, Richard Goldstone, who was also a Constitutional Court judge in the new South Africa), much like the State Capture Commission is known as the Zondo Commission.

The Chief Justice’s work in labour law continued when he was appointed to the Ministerial Task Team which crafted the Draft Labour Relations Bill in 1994, which was chaired by labour organiser Halton Cheadle, who had worked with Justice Cameron in the 1980s. The Chief Justice’s appointment as the first Chairperson of the CCMA’s governing body was short-lived, and he resigned when he was appointed Acting Judge of the Labour Court in 1997. He was appointed to the court permanently later that year by President Nelson Mandela.

In early 1999, he became a judge of what was then known as the Transvaal Provincial Division of the High Court in Pretoria. He was then appointed Acting Judge President of the Labour Court and Labour Appeal Court, and Judge President in 2000, where he would serve for around a decade.

An example of why he received an award from the KZN Legal Forum, for his human rights efforts, can be found in his first judgment, Afrox Limited v SA Chemical Workers Union and Others, which he cited in his Judicial Service Commission (JSC) interview for the position of Chief Justice: “Talking about that first one, Afrox,” he said during his interview, “... it was handed down in ‘97. I was an acting judge of the labour court. As I said it was my first judgment, but a few years later it was upheld by the labour appeal court. Many of the judgments that I have written have stood the test of time.”

Speaking to Public Sector Leaders, the Chief Justice cites Engen Petroleum Limited v Commissioner for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration and Others, when he was Judge President of the Labour Appeal Court, as one of his key judgments.

Another significant judgment which the Chief Justice wrote is Ndima and Others, Sithukuza and Others v Waverley Blankets Limited which, he said during his JSC interview, “is a case where, which I also wrote as a judge of the labour court which had a very meaningful impact on the lives of workers in this country [sic].”

His contribution to jurisprudence has been widely acknowledged. Speaking at the Chief Justice’s JSC interview, Acting Judge President of the Supreme Court of Appeal Xola Petse, who chaired the interviews, said, “... the point I just want to make that, having read them [the Chief Justice’s judgments], they all bear the hallmarks of industry, scholarship, intellectual rigour and clarity of thought.”

Judges Matter shared a similar sentiment: “As a jurist, DCJ Zondo is regarded as one of the most influential figures in the development of South African labour law.”

His journey at the Constitutional Court began in 2012, when he was appointed as one of the Constitutional Court judges. In 2017, he was appointed Deputy Chief Justice and went on to fill-in for the retired Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, as Acting Chief Justice. After making the list of candidates that President Ramaphosa submitted to the JSC, he commenced his term as Chief Justice on the 1st of April, 2022.

During the Chief Justice’s JSC interview, Deputy President Petse gave him an opportunity to explain, “how you see the role of the chief justice in a constitutional democracy...”

He responded: “I believe that a Chief Justice must be somebody who is humble, it must be somebody who appreciates that he’s not Chief Justice because he’s necessarily the most brilliant of the judges. But it must be somebody who appreciates everyone’s contributions and tries to work with everybody.”

He tells Public Sector Leaders that being appointed head of the judiciary is a “special honour and privilege.”

“I don’t take it for granted, and I know it gives me an opportunity to make a serious contribution in the functioning of the courts, which I am determined to make. And I think that what I can point out is that there is very strong cooperation from my colleagues who are heads of courts.”

This support is especially important given the challenges the judiciary is facing, which the Chief Justice intends on addressing in the time he has left at the Constitutional Court. He takes Public Sector Leaders through five focus areas: The JSC, infrastructure, vacant positions, institutional independence and gender transformation.

Regarding the JSC, he says, “I think a lot of us are concerned that there is a perception out there that some candidates are not always treated fairly and so on. But my own sense is that all of us in the commission want to make sure that we deal with that without compromising. We need to remain firm and interrogate issues properly. We want to strike the balance.