Also in 1991, as the negotiations to end apartheid accelerated, Mahomed was appointed as the first black judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
[3][4] After matriculating in 1950 at the Pretoria Indian Boys' High School, he moved to Johannesburg to enrol at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he was one of a small group of non-white students.
[6] It continued until the mid-1970s, when a white advocate intervened to obtain a special governmental dispensation allowing Mahomed his own room in chambers.
[3][5] Five years later, in September 1974,[7] Mahomed became the first non-white advocate to take silk in South Africa,[1] after which his white colleagues invited him to lunch in the common room.
[5] However, throughout his career, the Group Areas Act banned Mahomed from staying overnight in the Orange Free State, meaning that he had to leave and re-enter the province daily whenever he argued a case before the Supreme Court's Appellate Division in Bloemfontein.
[1] He was also a founding trustee of the Legal Resources Centre,[10] and he authored several law journal articles and a book, with Lewis Dison, on the Group Areas Act.
[8] On 11 August 1991, amid the negotiations to end apartheid, Mahomed was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
[21] The controversy was compared to a similar saga four decades earlier when L. C. Steyn had been elevated over his more senior colleague, Oliver Schreiner.
[11] By February 2000, Mahomed was seriously ill with pancreatic cancer and took leave from the bench, with his deputy, Hennie van Heerden, acting as Chief Justice in his stead.
[33][34] On behalf of the Supreme Court, acting Chief Justice van Heerden apologised posthumously to Mahomed for the discriminatory treatment he had received during apartheid.
[35] After Mahomed's death, a delay in appointing his successor led to rumours that the government had revived its proposal to restructure the apex courts.
[24] In November 2001, Parliament passed the Sixth Amendment of the Constitution of South Africa, which renamed the judicial leadership positions: Constitutional Court President Chaskalson became the Chief Justice of South Africa, and the Supreme Court of Appeal was henceforth led by its own President.