Thembile Skweyiya

Thembile Skweyiya (17 June 1939 to 1 September 2015) was a South African judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 2004 to 2014. Admitted as an advocate in 1970, he became the first Black African senior counsel in South Africa in 1989 and served as a judge of the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court from 2001 to 2004; he also acted as Deputy Chief Justice from November 2013 to March 2014 and was Chancellor of the University of Fort Hare from 2008 to 2015. Described as a progressive justice with a particular interest in children rights, he authored the landmark Du Toit v Minister for Welfare and Population Development decision granting same-sex couples the right to adopt children jointly, wrote the majority judgment in Joseph v City of Johannesburg expanding the state duty to satisfy residents socioeconomic rights, and, in one of his final judgments, protected the anonymity of child offenders in sexual offense cases in J v National Director of Public Prosecutions. He later served as Inspecting Judge of Correctional Services in 2015. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/