Sisi Khampepe
[1] During that period, one of her former professors encouraged her to apply for a postgraduate scholarship,[2] and she ultimately moved to Massachusetts to attend Harvard Law School, completing an LLM in 1982.
[2] With the assistance of her teenage inspiration, Helen Suzman, and the Legal Resources Centre's Felicia Kentridge, she was ultimately recruited as a candidate attorney at Bowman Gilfillan, where she served her articles from 1983.
[1] On 15 December 1995, Khampepe was among the 17 individuals appointed by President Nelson Mandela to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
In 2002, President Mbeki appointed Khampepe and Judge Dikgang Moseneke to lead a judicial observer mission to the 2002 Zimbabwean presidential election, the outcome of which was disputed due to claims of vote-rigging by Robert Mugabe's ZANU–PF.
[12] In March 2005, President Mbeki appointed Khampepe to lead a one-person commission of inquiry into the future of the Directorate of Special Operations, the specialised anti-corruption unit better known as the Scorpions.
[15][16] However, by the time the report was released, Mbeki's political party, the African National Congress (ANC), had already initiated legislation to disband the Scorpions entirely.
[17] Nonetheless, observers said that Khampepe's "principled line" and "politically incorrect defence of the unit's prosecutorial independence" cemented her public profile and her reputation as a judge.
[2] In August 2009, Khampepe was among the 24 candidates whom the Judicial Service Commission shortlisted for possible appointment to four vacancies on the Constitutional Court of South Africa, arising from the respective resignations of Justices Pius Langa, Yvonne Mokgoro, Kate O’Regan, and Albie Sachs.
[28] Although Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke was considered to be the overall favourite, commentators believed that Khampepe would be the foremost candidate if President Zuma elected to appoint a woman;[28] according to Eusebius McKaiser, she was "more politically acceptable to the ANC than other options".
[34] At the end of Khampepe's tenure in the Constitutional Court, Chief Justice Raymond Zondo singled out for commendation her jurisprudence "on the rights of women and children, and other vulnerable members of society".
[35] This included notably her judgment in Teddy Bear Clinic v Minister of Justice, handed down unanimously in 2013, which decriminalised consensual sexual acts between minor children and which was widely heralded as progressive.
[36][37] Likewise, in the labour law matter of Mankayi v AngloGold Ashanti, Khampepe wrote on behalf of the majority in finding that mineworkers with occupational lung disease were entitled to institute civil claims against their employers;[38] this holding enabled an unprecedented flurry of class action litigation against South African mines.
[40] Her minority judgment in AB v Minister of Social Development was described as a "tour de force infused with both reason and compassion" and based on an expansive conception of reproductive rights.
[44] Described by Ferial Haffajee as a "decisive defence of the rule of law" and by Pierre de Vos as a "forceful and eloquent defence of the judiciary",[46][43] Khampepe's Zuma II judgment was viewed as momentous and was welcomed by civil society organisations including AfriForum, Corruption Watch, Freedom Under Law, and Frank Chikane's Defend Our Democracy campaign.
[52] Though Zuma's spokesman, Mzwanele Manyi, called this judgment a "miscarriage of justice",[53] it was commended for resisting Zuma's so-called Stalingrad tactics; quoting approvingly from Khampepe's opening paragraph, which stated that, "Like all things in life, like the best of times and the worst of times, litigation must, at some point, come to an end", Mpumelelo Mkhabela suggested that the doctrine of legal finality should be renamed the Khampepe Doctrine in her honour.
[59] She also recommended a review of the university's language policy, observing an enduring "cultural preference" for the use of Afrikaans, which she said caused linguistic exclusion and racial division.
[62] In September 2023, Panyaza Lesufi, the Premier of Gauteng, appointed Khampepe to chair a three-member commission of inquiry into a recent deadly fire in an illegally occupied government building in Marshalltown, Johannesburg.
[63] During the commission's proceedings, Khampepe recused a co-commissioner, Thulani Makhubela, saying that his involvement would create an appearance of bias because he had previously used his Twitter account to voice support for xenophobic organisations, including Operation Dudula.
[65] In November 2020, Danny Jordaan announced that Khampepe would be appointed to chair the newly established ethics committee of the South African Football Association (Safa).
