Ismail Mohammad, Chief Justice of South Africa as well as of Namibia

Compiled By: Syed Ali Shahbaz
On July 5, 1931 AD, Ismail Mohammad, Chief Justice of South Africa as well as of Namibia, was born in Pretoria into a Muslim family of Indian merchants. Educated at the Indian School, he became a qualified lawyer, but was refused admission to the Pretoria Bar Association as it was reserved for white lawyers during the apartheid era.
Later he succeeded in joining the Johannesburg Bar Association. In the 1960s he served as a lawyer in Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe. In 1974 he became the first non-white in South African history and co-authored the constitution of Namibia. In 1984, he was made an English Barrister.
In 1991 he became Chair of the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, and the country's first non-white judge of the Supreme Court. He became a judge of the Constitutional Court in 1995. In 1996 he was made Chief Justice of South Africa by President Nelson Mandela. Ismail Mohammad passed away in 2000 at the age of 69.