[1] Budlender's student activism attracted the attention of the apartheid government, and Prime Minister John Vorster was said (possibly apocryphally) to have described him as "the second most dangerous man in South Africa".
[2] In 1979, he, Arthur Chaskalson, and Felicia Kentridge co-founded the Legal Resources Centre, supported initially by external donors such as the Ford Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation.
[2] In 1996, President Nelson Mandela appointed Budlender as director-general in the national Department of Land Affairs, which was then under the political leadership of Minister Derek Hanekom.
[1] After the June 1999 general election, newly appointed Minister Thoko Didiza announced that Budlender would be replaced as director-general;[8] the Mail & Guardian said that he would "leave a gap that will be difficult to fill",[9] and Helena Dolny of the Land Bank publicly suggested that his departure was part of an "ethnic cleansing" of the department's "white left".
Among other clients, he represented mineworkers affected by lung disease in a massive class action suit against 32 mining companies;[14][15] pensioner Elizabeth Gumede in a challenge to the constitutionality of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act;[16] Black Sash in its campaign to hold Minister Bathabile Dlamini accountable for the 2017 social grants crisis;[17][18] and activist Andrew Feinstein during the Seriti Commission of Inquiry into the Arms Deal.
[19] In addition, in 2012, retired judge Ian Farlam recruited Budlender to serve as one of five evidence leaders at his commission of inquiry into the Marikana massacre.
[28][29] In October 2019, the Department of Justice further announced that it would retain the assistance of Budlender and three other senior advocates – Wim Trengove‚ Ngwako Maenetje, and Tembeka Ngcukaitobi – in guiding state capture-related investigations and prosecutions.
[30] Subsequent to that announcement, Budlender appeared for the National Prosecuting Authority on several occasions,[31] most recently in opposing former president Jacob Zuma's bid to have Billy Downer removed as the state prosecutor assigned to his corruption trial.
[34] Budlender acted as a judge of the High Court of South Africa for the first time in 2001, serving in the Witwatersrand Local Division between May and June.
[42][43][44][45] As early as 2004, legal journalist Carmel Rickard caused a stir by suggesting that Budlender's non-appointment demonstrated that the bench was effectively "closed" to white men.
It's time for the Judicial Service Commission to be frank with the legal profession and say that white male lawyers should no longer apply for positions on the Bench.
[2] His son Steven Budlender is also an advocate;[52] the pair appeared together in the Constitutional Court in 2022, arguing on behalf of the defendants in Mineral Sands Resources v Reddell.