Billy Mothle

Selewe Peter "Billy" Mothle (born 24 July 1956) is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. Before his elevation to that court, he was a judge of the Gauteng High Court from January 2011 to June 2021. He rose to prominence as a lawyer in Pretoria, where he practised as an attorney until he gained admittance as an advocate in 1998. He took silk in 2008.

Early life and education Mothle was born on 24 July 1956 in Lady Selborne, Pretoria in the former Transvaal. He matriculated in 1974 at Pretoria's Mamelodi High School and enrolled in legal study at the University of the North, but he was excluded after the 1976 Soweto uprising. He completed his degree at the University of South Africa, receiving a BProc in 1979. Several years later, in 1987, he completed an LLM at the Georgetown University Law Center. He was a founding member of Lawyers for Human Rights and the founding vice-president of the Democratic Lawyers Congress. He spent over ten years on the bench. During that period, he presided over the conviction of Masego Kgomo's murderer; until he struck the case from the roll, he also presided in the prosecution of politician Julius Malema on corruption charges. Perhaps most prominently, in 2017, he presided over the reopening of the inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol, an anti-apartheid activist who died in 1971 at John Vorster Square. Mothle overturned the apartheid-era inquest in finding that Timol had not committed suicide but had been tortured and murdered by members of the Security Branch. He later said of the matter that, "I realised early on there was no precedent to follow. I knew that every step I was taking was setting a precedent. His ruling set a precedent for reopening investigations into deaths of other anti-apartheid activists. He was nominated for the position by Advocates for Transformation. he expressed his support for feminism and his opposition to capital punishment.

In September 2019, Mothle was among the eight judges appointed to serve on the Special Investigating Unit's Special Tribunal, a judicial body newly established by President Cyril Ramaphosa to expedite the civil recovery of public funds lost to corruption and irregular expenditure. He was seconded to the tribunal for two years, leaving once he was elevated to the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2021.

Supreme Court of Appeal: 2021–present In April 2021, Mothle was shortlisted and interviewed again for new vacancies on the Supreme Court of Appeal. He had a brief, 25-minute interview, with questions centring on the Timol inquest, which Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng said he had handled with "great wisdom and dignity". and he joined the Supreme Court bench on 1 July 2021.

Personal life He is married and has two children. He was the secretary-general of the South African Softball Federation from 1977 to 1981, and he has been a trustee of his former high school, Mamelodi High, since 2017.