[1][3] Ngcobo graduated from the University of Zululand amid the political turmoil of the mid-apartheid period, and he was arrested during the Soweto uprising of 1976 and detained without trial until July 1977;[4] he later said that his detention was a formative experience in his legal career.
The Centre focused on public interest litigation, particularly cases involving apartheid legislation and including matters before the Supreme Court of South Africa.
Having formerly served several stints as a visiting lecturer, he joined the University of Natal as the acting director of its Legal Aid Services Clinic.
[1] At the end of that year, however, he returned to Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz as an associate attorney with a labour and immigration law practice.
He returned to the Durban Bar, establishing a generalist practice as an advocate but retaining his specialism in labour law.
[1] In 1993, he became coordinator of the Equal Opportunities Project of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Natal, and in the same year he was appointed to the now-defunct Industrial Court of KwaZulu.
[1] Ngcobo's stint as an acting judge ended in August 1996, and the following month he was permanently appointed to the bench in the same division (later renamed the Cape High Court).
[1] In April 1999, Ngcobo was interviewed in Cape Town as a potential candidate for appointment to succeed the late John Didcott as a justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
Though Edwin Cameron was viewed as the favourite candidate among the legal fraternity,[4] President Nelson Mandela confirmed Ngcobo's appointment on 30 May 1999.
He wrote the Constitutional Court's opinion in the landmark Doctors for Life v Speaker of the National Assembly, a 2006 challenge to the Choice on Termination of Pregnancy Act which demarcated the scope of the constitutional right to public participation in lawmaking, and in Albutt v Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, on victim participation in presidential pardons.
[14] Ngcobo was often described as an "imperial" and "intimidating" Chief Justice, in contrast to his more "egalitarian" predecessors, Pius Langa and Arthur Chaskalson.
[18] Indeed, on 3 June, Zuma announced that Ngcobo had agreed, at his request, to serve five additional years as Chief Justice, an extension that would be effected in terms of Section 8(a) of the Judges Remuneration and Conditions of Employment Act.
The announcement was highly controversial: while some observers, like commentator Richard Calland, supported the move,[19] others strongly opposed it on the grounds that a presidential extension derogated a parliamentary power and undermined judicial independence.
[23] In addition, while the court's judgement was pending, the Cabinet initiated a legislative amendment to the Judges Renumeration Act which would explicitly provide for an extension to the Chief Justice's term.
[37][38] Before his appointment to the bench, Ngcobo occasionally served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Natal, teaching race legislation in 1988 and constitutional litigation in 1995.