Blitz Bureau
SOUTH African President Cyril Ramaphosa named Mandisa Maya as the first female chief justice, effective on September 1, following consultations with the Judicial Service Commission. This is a significant milestone for the country, the presidency said in a statement. Maya, the current deputy chief justice, will replace Raymond Zondo, whose term ends on August 31.
Previous appointment
Maya, 60, previously served as the judge president of the Supreme Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in South Africa, before her promotion to the Constitutional Court.
She was the first Black woman to be appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal and the first woman to be appointed deputy president and then president of that court.
Ramaphosa nominated Maya for chief justice in February and she was interviewed by the Judicial Services Commission in May. The commission recommended her and noted her appointment. Maya grew up in a rural part of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province.
She won a Fulbright Scholarship in 1989 to do a Master’s in law at Duke University in the United States, an incredibly rare achievement for a young Black woman during the apartheid era of racial segregation in South Africa. She said in an interview in 2017 that initially she intended to study medicine but changed her mind on the first day she attended university in South Africa and switched to law after looking at a medical textbook.
