After 40 years in law, Sisi Khampepe is about to retire as Acting Chief Justice of South Africa. From humble beginnings, she represented workers and trade unions when Apartheid laws and a deeply patriarchal society did not welcome black women practicing law. With a LLM from Harvard, she was appointed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission by President Nelson Mandela, then was asked to observe the 2002 Zimbabwean elections with fellow judge Dikgang Moseneke. Their brilliant report, deeply critical of the elections, was suppressed by the South African Government for more than a decade to avoid tension between neighboring countries. 

As a Judge of the High Court, she chaired a Commission of Enquiry in 2004/5 into the controversial Directorate of Special Operations, known as the Scorpions. Her report vindicated the Directorate, but was disregarded by politicians and officials.

The subsequent corruption scandals eventually led to her chairing a bench of the South African Constitutional Court in 2021, finding ex-president Jacob Zuma guilty of “unprecedented” Contempt of Court and sentencing him to prison. The judgement stated that “... Mr. Zuma has earned himself a punitive sanction of direct and unsuspended committal.” His foundation’s reaction, that she was “judicially emotional and angry …,” epitomizes the deeply patriarchal environment she had spent her career in.

Julia Sebutinde grew up in a Uganda wracked by civil wars. Appointed a Judge of the High Court in Uganda, she presided over Commissions of Enquiry into corruption in the police, the Ugandan People’s Defense Force and the Ugandan Revenue Authority, earning her the enmity of many but the admiration of many more. She has also served on the Special Court on Sierra Leone in 2005, judging on war crimes in the civil wars in that region. 

She was chosen by the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council as Judge of the International Court of Justice in the Hague, the highest court in the world in 2012. From her office in the Peace Palace, she decried attempts by states to solve conflicts by force instead of justice.  

“I personally lived through three civil wars and I nearly lost my life, nearly lost my children,” she says. She holds strong views on conflict, seeks to uphold the rights of victims and does not hesitate to express herself against faulty logic or state-sponsored violence. Her experience both as an expert on international justice — her biography lists an impressive number of papers and lectures on the rule of law in Africa and related subjects — and as an eyewitness to violence by state institutions explains her anger at sentiments against the International Court of Justice and the trend towards non-peaceful resolution of disputes. 

Without Justice there can be no society, no civilization. And Justice is a lady, after all.