Dhaya Pillay | |
---|---|
Judge of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court | |
Assumed office 2010 | |
Nominated by | Judicial Service Commission |
Appointed by | President Jacob Zuma |
Judge of the Labour Court of South Africa | |
Assumed office 2000 | |
Nominated by | Judicial Service Commission |
Appointed by | President Thabo Mbeki |
Personal details | |
Born | Durban,South Africa | 5 January 1958
Alma mater | University of South Africa University of Natal |
Dhayanithie Pillay (born 5 January 1958) is a South African judge of the Labour Court and KwaZulu-Natal High Court. [1] [2]
Pillay was born in Durban in 1958 and completed her B.Proc at UNISA in 1982. [1] Early in her career as an attorney,she joined the firm of noted activist lawyer Yunus Mohamed,a founding member of the UDF and the instructing attorney in the Delmas Treason Trial. [2] Pillay became heavily involved in important political cases and effectively led the firm when Mohamed was in detention. [2] [3]
In the late 1980s,Pillay's practice moved towards labour law,in which she later became an expert,acquiring an LLM in the subject from the University of Natal in 1993. [2] Pillay was a drafter of the Labour Relations Act and later became a senior CCMA commissioner. She also served as an advisor to the drafters of the South African Constitution. [1]
Pillay was made a judge of the Labour Court in 2000 and of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in 2010. [1] She supported Judge President Chiman Patel –now ousted amid suspicions that he fell out with the KwaZulu-Natal political establishment [4] –in the racial spat over his appointment. [2] [5]
In July 2015 she was interviewed and shortlisted by the Judicial Service Commission for appointment to the Constitutional Court of South Africa. [1] She was nominated by rights groups and former Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob [1] and was praised by commentators. [2]
Pillay is an extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria and has been a visiting academic at the University of Seattle,New York University,the University of Oxford and the Open University. [1] She was recognised as a human rights defender by the Durban branch of Amnesty International in 2005. [2]
Navanethem "Navi" Pillay is a South African jurist who served as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2008 to 2014. A South African of Indian Tamil origin,Pillay was the first non-white woman judge of the High Court of South Africa. She has also served as a judge of the International Criminal Court and President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Her four-year term as High Commissioner for Human Rights began on 1 September 2008 and was extended an additional two years in 2012. In September 2014 Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad succeeded her in her position as High Commissioner for Human Rights. In April 2015,Pillay became the 16th Commissioner of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty. She is also one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders.
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