Zak Yacoob

Zakeria Mohammed "Zak" Yacoob (born 3 March 1948) is a retired South African judge who served in the Constitutional Court of South Africa from February 1998 to January 2013. He was appointed to the bench by Nelson Mandela and retired after serving the maximum 15-year term. Before he joined the bench, he was a practising advocate and an anti-apartheid activist.

Yacoob was born in Durban, where he was admitted as an advocate in 1973 and as Senior Counsel in 1991. He rose to prominence representing anti-apartheid activists in public law matters and criminal political trials. At the same time, he was himself active in the Natal Indian Congress, United Democratic Front, and other anti-apartheid organisations. In the 1990s, he was a technical adviser in the post-apartheid constitutional negotiations and a member of the inaugural Independent Electoral Commission before he was appointed to the Constitutional Court.

He is well known for drafting the Constitutional Court's judgement in Grootboom, a landmark socioeconomic rights matter. He is also a prominent disability rights activist, having been blind since infancy.

Early life and education Yacoob was born on 3 March 1948 in Durban in the former Natal Province. His father was a Muslim cleric and he was classified as Indian under apartheid. At the age of 16 months, he became blind due to meningitis, and from 1956 to 1966, he attended the Arthur Blaxall School for the Blind in Durban. and Pravin Gordhan and other African National Congress (ANC) members in the Operation Vula trial.

During the same period, Yacoob himself was personally active in the anti-apartheid movement. In 1980, when the Durban Committee of Ten was established amid a wave of local protests and a stringent government response, he became the committee's chairperson.

In the 1990s, Yacoob was involved in the post-apartheid transition and drafting of the post-apartheid Constitution, initially as a member of the Technical Committee on Fundamental Rights at the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum. He served on the Independent Electoral Commission from December 1993 to June 1994, and after that he was a member of the Constitutional Assembly's panel of independent experts. He was a notoriously intimidating figure in the court's hearings, partly because of his impressive power of recall.

After 15 years on the bench, Yacoob retired at the end of January 2013.

Retirement In his retirement, Yacoob continued his public service in various capacities. In 2014, he led an independent "fact-finding" inquiry into allegations of serious misconduct at the National Prosecuting Authority, publishing damning findings against prosecutors Nomgcobo Jiba and Lawrence Mrwebi. The following year, he was the head of a Hague-based panel of international judges who conducted the International People's Tribunal on the 1965 mass killings in Indonesia, and in 2018, he chaired South Africa's People Tribunal on Economic Crimes, which was mandated to probe apartheid-era economic crimes as well as the post-apartheid Arms Deal and state capture. He also continued his disability activism – having formerly served as the chairperson of the South African National Council for the Blind,

Meanwhile, during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, Yacoob publicly clashed with the ANC leadership. In April 2016, following the Constitutional Court's judgement on the Nkandla saga in Economic Freedom Fighters v Speaker, Yacoob was among the anti-apartheid stalwarts who called publicly for Zuma to resign; he said that Zuma had "acted miserably, dishonestly and horribly".

Personal life In 1970, he married Anu Yacoob, with whom he had two children. and their son is a scientist at the Large Hadron Collider. '''