Cape Town: For the first time in South Africa, a woman has been appointed to the post of Chief Justice. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa appointed the current Deputy Chief Justice Mandisa Maya as the Chief Justice of the country on Thursday. Maya’s term as the Chief Justice of South Africa will begin from September 1. She will replace the current Chief Justice Raymond Zondo after his retirement.
Interview taken by Judicial Service Commission
Before being promoted to the country’s top ‘Constitutional Court’, 60-year-old Maya has served as ‘Judge President’ in South Africa’s second largest court ‘Supreme Court of Appeal’. 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 the post of Chief Justice in February and was interviewed by the Judicial Service Commission in May.
Also studied in America
Ramaphosa said in a statement that the commission has recommended her name and said that her appointment will prove to be a milestone for the country. Maya grew up in a rural area of South Africa’s Eastern Cape province. In 1989, she received a ‘Fulbright Scholarship’ to do a master’s degree in law at Duke University in the US, which was a rare achievement for a young black woman during the apartheid era in South Africa.
