About Ismail Mahomed
Ismail Mahomed SCOB SC (5 July 1931 – 17 June 2000) was a South African lawyer and jurist who served as the first non-white Chief Justice of South Africa from January 1997 until his death in June 2000. He was also the Chief Justice of Namibia from 1992 to 1999 and the inaugural Deputy President of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 1995 to 1996. Born in Pretoria to Indian Memon immigrant parents hailing from Ranavav, Mahomed practiced as an advocate in Johannesburg during apartheid, becoming reputed as one of South Africa's foremost litigators in civil rights law and administrative law. In 1974, he became the first non-white advocate to take silk in South Africa. Although apartheid precluded him from judicial appointment in South Africa, he was a judge of appeal in neighbouring Swaziland from 1979 and in neighbouring Lesotho from 1982. He was the co-chairperson of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa in 1991. Also in 1991, as the negotiations to end apartheid accelerated, Mahomed was appointed as the first non-white judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa. He was elevated to the Constitutional Court when it was established in 1995, but after two years he returned to the Supreme Court's Appellate Division, newly re-constituted as the Supreme Court of Appeal. His appointment as Chief Justice of the new court, spearheaded by President Nelson Mandela, was a point of controversy among the white legal establishment, but he led the appellate court until his death from pancreatic cancer. Five years later, in September 1974, Mahomed became the first non-white advocate to take silk in South Africa, after which his white colleagues invited him to lunch in the common room.
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