Pius Langa

Pius Nkonzo Langa SCOB (25 March 1939 – 24 July 2013) was Chief Justice of South Africa from June 2005 to October 2009. Formerly a human rights lawyer, he was appointed as a puisne judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa upon its inception in 1995. He was the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa from November 2001 until May 2005, when President Thabo Mbeki elevated him to the Chief Justiceship. He was South Africa's first black African Chief Justice.

The son of a Zulu pastor, Langa left school as a teenager to enter the workforce. Over the next two decades, he studied for his matric certificate while working in a clothing factory and then studied for his legal qualifications while working as a civil servant in the Department of Justice. He left the civil service at the rank of magistrate in 1977, when he was admitted as an advocate. Thereafter he practised law in Durban, specialising in the defence of anti-apartheid activists accused of political offences. He was a member of the United Democratic Front and the president of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1988 to 1994. During the same period, he attended the negotiations to end apartheid as a member of the Constitutional Committee of the African National Congress.

Shortly after he took silk in January 1994, Langa was appointed to the newly established Constitutional Court by post-apartheid President Nelson Mandela. In August 1997, Mandela additionally appointed him as the court's second Deputy President; his title was changed to Deputy Chief Justice after the Sixth Constitutional Amendment was passed in November 2001. On 1 June 2005, he succeeded Arthur Chaskalson as Chief Justice, a position which he held until his mandatory retirement in October 2009.

Leading the court during a period of political turmoil, Langa was widely respected for his mild and conciliatory manner, though he was also subject to criticism from both populist and conservative quarters. In particular, he is remembered for leading the court in lodging a controversial misconduct complaint against Judge John Hlophe, who was accused of attempting to interfere with the Constitutional Court's judgment in the politically sensitive matter of Thint v National Director of Public Prosecutions.

Early life and education Langa was born on 25 March 1939 in Bushbuckridge in the former Transvaal Province. Their father, Simon Peter Langa, was a Zulu-speaking charismatic preacher from Natal, whose work for the Pentecostal Holiness Church had brought the family to Bushbuckridge temporarily. The family left Bushbuckridge during his infancy and spent several years in various parts of the Northern Transvaal, primarily in Pietersburg, until in 1949 they settled in Stanger, Natal. According to Mark Gevisser, Langa's moral opposition to capital punishment was such that he called publicly for the killers to be spared the death penalty, though they were hanged anyway.

Legal practice: 1977–1994 After completing his LLB, Langa left the civil service and returned to Durban, where he was admitted as an advocate of the Supreme Court of South Africa in June 1977. Langa's other activist clients included Patrick Maqubela, Jeff Radebe, Penuell Maduna, Nceba Faku, and Tony Yengeni, whom he defended against charges ranging from public violence to sabotage, treason, and murder. He also represented various civic bodies and trade unions. He also represented the ANC at the negotiations to end apartheid, both during pre-negotiations at Groote Schuur and Pretoria and during formal multi-party talks at the Convention for a Democratic South Africa and Multi-Party Negotiating Forum. The bench was sworn in on 14 February 1995.

Deputy Chief Justice In August 1997, President Mandela appointed Langa to succeed Ismail Mohamed as the Deputy President of the Constitutional Court, in which capacity he deputised Justice President Arthur Chaskalson. He held that position until November 2001, However, Langa was also viewed as a frontrunner. Because Chaskalson took leave in late 2004, he was already serving as Acting Chief Justice, and some members of the governing ANC, including Justice Minister Penuell Maduna (Langa's former client) and Deputy Justice Minister Johnny de Lange, apparently preferred Langa's Charterist political background to Moseneke's Black Consciousness history. In his interview with the Judicial Service Commission in Cape Town the following month, Langa was asked about racism and demographic transformation in the judiciary; he dismissed reports that he had a "gradualist" approach to demographic transformation, instead describing his approach as "revolutionary". The Democratic Alliance, the official opposition, announced after the interview that it would support Langa's appointment. with Moseneke as his deputy.

Hlophe controversies Early in his career as Chief Justice, Langa was tasked with mediating the resolution of a major spat in the Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa, where Judge President John Hlophe had come into conflict with several of his colleagues after accusing them of racism. Three years later, Hlophe was at the centre of an even larger controversy when Langa, on behalf of the full Constitutional Court bench, laid a complaint against him with the Judicial Service Commission, alleging that he had attempted improperly to influence the justices' opinion in the Constitutional Court matter of Thint v National Director of Public Prosecutions. Thint was a politically sensitive case, involving the search and seizure of the belongings of former Deputy President Jacob Zuma; Langa ultimately wrote on behalf of a majority of the court in finding against Zuma.

As the Judicial Service Commission considered the complaint against Hlophe in subsequent months, Hlophe strongly attacked Langa and Moseneke, accusing them of waging a political campaign against him on behalf of Zuma's opponents. Although Langa categorically denied this allegation, he was thereafter "regarded with intense suspicion" by some of Hlophe and Zuma's supporters. In August 2009, Hlophe reportedly told the Mail & Guardian that he had recently refused to shake Langa's hand, saying, "I am not going to shake a white man's hand."

Legacy

Like Graeme Pollock, who seemed to have more time to play his shots than did mere mortals, Pius Langa has the gift of doing everything with deliberation. He is a singularly measured person, never visibly flustered, the Kiplingesque man who doesn't lose his head. He always seems to have time for reflection... In the seemingly interminable readthroughs at the Constitutional Court, when each word, comma and quotation in a draft judgment is debated in full conference, Langa frequently came up with the unanimously acceptable proposal and his own judgments demonstrate how carefully he chooses his words. — Retired Justice Johann Kriegler in August 2005 His critics said that he "lacked the hard edge" necessary for judicial leadership and that he had allowed politicians to become too powerful in the Judicial Service Commission, which he chaired. as well as for his "ability to calm troubled waters without raising his voice or taking the offensive". In one description, "Langa's calm demeanour is deceptive. Behind it lies the resolve and moral purpose of a preacher's son." Thint was one of a series of cases heard by the Langa court which emanated from the corruption prosecution of Deputy President Zuma and his associate Schabir Shaik, or from broader challenges to the status of the National Prosecuting Authority. In other human rights matters, he wrote for the court in De Reuck v Director of Public Prosecutions, Witwatersrand Local Division, on child pornography, and in MEC for Education, KwaZulu-Natal v Pillay, on freedom of cultural expression in public schools; the latter also marked the first time that the Constitutional Court considered discrimination as defined by the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act. Other notable Constitutional Court judgments written by Langa included several in criminal procedure, including Thint, Investigating Directorate: SEO v Hyundai Motors, and Zealand v Minister of Justice. He was also noted for his dissenting opinion in Masiya v Director of Public Prosecutions, Pretoria.

Academic Theunis Roux admired Langa's majority judgments in Thint and Glenister v President for "taking the political heat" out of sensitive matters without resorting to "a veil of legalism". Extra-curially, he expressed ambivalence towards demands for the "Africanisation" of law, saying, "We are in Africa, we are all very much African. But we happen to be in South Africa and we have a purely South African Constitution." In later years, he led a delegation of the International Bar Association on a review of criminal procedure in Cameroon, and he was a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. Justice Sandile Ngcobo was appointed to succeed Langa as Chief Justice.

Langa's most notable public role in his retirement was as chairman of the Press Freedom Commission, which was mandated by Print Media South Africa and the South African National Editors' Forum to conduct an inquiry into the regulation of the press between July 2011 and April 2012.

Langa was admitted to hospital in Durban in April 2013. He returned to hospital in June and died on 24 July 2013 at the Milpark Hospital in Johannesburg. He was granted a special official funeral, which was held on 3 August at Durban City Hall; it was televised and featured a speech by Jacob Zuma, who by then was the President of South Africa.

Honours and awards Among other honours, Langa received the Gruber Foundation's 2004 Prize for Justice, awarded jointly to him and Chief Justice Chaskalson, In April 2008, President Mbeki inducted him into the Order of the Baobab, Gold for "his exceptional service in law, constitutional jurisprudence and human rights".

He was appointed as an honorary professor in procedural and clinic law at the University of Natal in June 1998, and he served for several years as a distinguished visiting professor at the Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

Personal life In 1966, he married Thandekile Beauty Langa . Born in 1944 in Pietermaritzburg, Mncwabe was a nurse by training. After a long illness with Parkinson's disease, she died in hospital on 30 August 2009, shortly before Langa's retirement. The couple had six children, four sons and two daughters;'''