Speeches

Tribute by the Deputy Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development, the Hon JH Jeffery, MP, at a Special Ceremonial Court Sitting in Honour of Justice Yvonne Mokgoro, held at the Constitutional Court, Johannesburg, 27 May 2024

Programme Director, the Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa,
The Mokgoro and Buffel family,
The Acting Speaker of the National Assembly,
The Deputy Chief Justice,
Members of the judiciary,
The National Director of Public Prosecutions,
Members of the legal profession, academia and civil society,
Colleagues and friends of Justice Mokgoro,

We are humbled and honoured to meet here today to pay tribute to a gifted jurist, a spirited activist, a highly respected researcher and academic, a fighter for social cohesion, a champion of our Constitution and an exceptional human being – for Justice Mokgoro was all of these and so much more.

As the first black woman to be appointed to the Constitutional Court Bench, she was a pioneer and a trailblazer.

What she brought to the Bench and to our country’s jurisprudence will forever be part of her legacy.

If there ever was one person who was the embodiment of the spirit of ubuntu it was Justice Mokgoro.

Upon her receiving the George Bizos Human Rights Award in 2022, her colleague, Justice Albie Sachs said, and I quote, “Yvonne was ubuntu in action and ubuntu in court.”

In the book called “Making the road by walking: The evolution of the South African Constitution” there is a whole chapter dedicated to the life and work of Justice Mokgoro and the authors say -

“Although she was not the only judge to rely on ubuntu in her judgments, the way Mokgoro approached this value was in a deeper and more Africanist way.  

Rather than focusing on the universality of the concept of ubuntu…. , Mokgoro embedded her understanding of this value in her heritage and her identity as an African woman.

Notably she also emphasised the inter-relationship between ubuntu and reconciliation in law, arguing for a less punitive and more restorative justice system.

Her pronouncements on ubuntu in the Makwanyane, Khosa and Dikoko cases in particular, continue to resonate as legal discourse that reflects the kind of care required by the Constitution.”

It was these elements of compassion and care which shaped Justice Mokgoro throughout her life and career.

She had said that she had always known that she wanted to work with people and therefore after matriculating from St Boniface, the local Catholic school in Kimberley, she initially enrolled for a degree in education as she wanted to become a teacher.

And, as you know, it was Robert Sobukwe who we need to thank for Justice Mokgoro deciding to become a lawyer instead.

As a young SASO activist, she stood up for a group of men arrested by the apartheid police for loitering. Upon her protesting the ill-treatment of one of the men by the police, she was arrested and spent a night in jail.

Her family then called Sobukwe to represent her and he secured her release.

In so doing it was Sobukwe who inspired her and told her that there was no law which prevented women from becoming lawyers, and so she decided to study law instead.

And, with a B Iuris, a LLB and two LLM degrees later, we can all agree that that was an excellent decision.

Through all the different phases of her life and her career, we see people – and specifically her care and compassion for people – as central in her life. Early in her life she started working as a nursing assistant, later a clerk in the Department of Justice of Bophuthatswana, later a maintenance officer and then a public prosecutor.

It was in the areas of research and in teaching law and in her life as an academic where, as the book I mentioned earlier correctly states, her rise was indeed “meteoric”.  

To be the first black women to be appointed to the Constitutional Court will always be a moment of enormous significance – not only for our courts, but for our democracy and in our history as a country – and Justice Mokgoro will always be remembered as a trailblazer and one who continues to inspire generations of women to study law and to enter the legal profession.

I was particularly struck by one article I read which so clearly illustrated the impact that apartheid had on Justice Mokgoro, even as she was on her way, quite literally, to the Constitutional Court.

In the article it tells of how the Constitutional Court was temporarily housed in Braampark, before moving to Constitutional Hill.

With Justice Mokgoro being unfamiliar with Johannesburg’s roads, she asked her eldest son to drive her to the court to prepare for her first day at work and she says - “I remember we drove on the M1 and Thati looked in the rear-view mirror and said: ‘Mama, there’s a police van following us.'”

The police stopped them and took them to Brixton police station on suspicion that their car was stolen. They were later released - without an apology.

Here was the very first black woman judge of the Constitutional Court, a leading human rights scholar, on her way the very institution which is the upper guardian of people’s human rights and the institution which would help transform our society in the pursuit of equality, freedom and dignity, and she is being stopped by an instrument of apartheid stereotyping and discrimination.

And when I think of that, I remind myself yet again, that even after 3 decades of democracy, all of us must ensure that we uphold human rights, and the human dignity, the freedom and the equality of others.

We must uphold and protect the integrity of our courts and those who serve on the Bench.  We must uphold and protect the Constitution and the rule of law. Justice Mokgoro would expect no less from us.

Justice Mokgoro shaped the laws of our country – not only as a jurist on the bench, but also in the 16 years she served as the chairperson of the South African Law Reform Commission, thereby infusing a human-rights based approach into our law.

In an interview, she once said that she sees her role as, and I quote -

“having great responsibility to my people, to justice in this country, to assist in providing people with what is necessary to improve the quality of their lives.”

And improve the quality of people’s lives she most certainly did. The poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about what “success” is and he writes that success is –

“To laugh often and much;
to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children;
to leave the world a bit better...
to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived.”

It sounds as if he could have written it especially for her.

I know that she was particularly fond of the work of Maya Angelou. Perhaps one of the most famous sayings of Maya Angelou is where she writes that –

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

This timeless wisdom reminds us that we all leave a legacy.   In the case of Justice Mokgoro, throughout her career and through her various judgments and legal writing, she stood up for the vulnerable and the oppressed, she advocated for the human rights of women and children, she ensured and guaranteed that the law protects those who are most vulnerable. And this has had an enormous impact on people’s lives.

It is perhaps best captured in the Khosa judgment, where she writes –

“[52] The right of access to social security, including social assistance, for those unable to support themselves and their dependants is entrenched because as a society we value human beings and want to ensure that people are afforded their basic needs.  A society must seek to ensure that the basic necessities of life are accessible to all if it is to be a society in which human dignity, freedom and equality are foundational.”

She was regularly requested to serve on many boards and institutions such as the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, to lecture at various universities, to serve on the council of the University of Venda and to chair the UN Human Rights Council’s Racial Justice Body, to name but a few.

I think the enormous number of tributes that have, and continue to, pour in show how highly respected and how dearly loved she was by so many people across all sectors of society, both in South Africa and internationally.

On behalf of the Executive, I want to convey our sincere condolences to the Mokgoro and Buffel families and I also want to thank you – thank you for sharing her with us as a nation. 

A great tree has fallen. She will be sorely missed. But we take comfort in knowing that her legacy will live on. Her strength, her courage, her unwavering commitment to human rights and in making the world a better place leaves an indelible mark.

She will continue to inspire many.

May she rest in peace.