Jody Kollapen

Narandran Jody Kollapen was born on May 19, 1957 and is a South African judge who joined the Constitutional Court of South Africa on January 1, 2022. He was appointed to the apex court by President Cyril Ramaphosa after a decade of service in the High Court of South Africa, and is a former chairperson of the South African Human Rights Commission. Kollapen rose to prominence in the 1980s as a human rights lawyer in Pretoria, notably as instructing attorney in several high profile apartheid era political trials. He served as national director of Lawyers for Human Rights in 1995 and 1996, then joined the Human Rights Commission, serving as its second chairperson from October 2002 to October 2009. He became an acting High Court judge in 2010 and joined the bench in the Gauteng Division permanently in May 2011, before his elevation to the Constitutional Court was announced on December 24, 2021.