Quartus de Wet (10 March 1899 – 18 December 1980) was a South African judge who served as Judge President of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa.
Born in 1899 in Pretoria, he was the son of Nicolaas Jacobus de Wet, Chief Justice of South Africa and acting Governor-General, and Ella Scheepers (his first wife), who is reputed to have composed the popular Afrikaans song Sarie Marais during the Anglo-Boer War.
[1] In 1922, De Wet was admitted as an advocate (the South African equivalent of a barrister) to the bar of Pretoria and after twenty three years in practice, in 1945, he took silk.
[2] He is famous for presiding over the 1963 Rivonia Trial of Nelson Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists.
[3] During the Rivonia Trial, de Wet sentenced Mandela and other anti-apartheid activists to life imprisonment, instead of a possible death sentence, for sabotage as a result of the trial, and he noted as he passed sentence: The crime of which the accused have been convicted, that is the main crime, the crime of conspiracy, is in essence one of high treason.