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South Africa has had all-male chief justices since the post was created in 1910 when it was still a British colony. Maya will be the eighth chief justice since South Africa became a democracy with the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994
President Cyril Ramaphosa named Mandisa Maya (60), the current deputy chief justice, as the country’s new most senior judge. Her term is due to start on Sept. 1. She will replace Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who will be retiring.
Previously Justice Maya served as the judge president of the Supreme Court of Appeal, the second-highest court in South Africa. 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.
South Africa has had all-male chief justices since the post was created in 1910 when it was still a British colony. Maya will be the eighth chief justice since South Africa became a democracy with the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
Ramaphosa nominated Maya for chief justice in February and she was interviewed by the Judicial Services Commission in May. The commission recommended her. Ramaphosa said that her appointment would be a significant milestone for the country.
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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.
