Mandisa Maya

Mandisa Muriel Lindelwa Maya (born 20 March 1964) is the Deputy Chief Justice of South Africa.

Maya was born on 20 March 1964 in St Cuthbert's, a rural area of Tsolo in the Transkei region of the Eastern Cape.

She was the eldest of six children born to Sandile and Nombulelo Maya, who were both teachers.

Her home language was Xhosa.

Her family moved to King William's Town in 1966 after her father got a job with Radio Bantu, and she attended school there until 1977, when, due to the disruptive effects of the Soweto uprising, she was sent to attend school in Mthatha.

She matriculated in 1981 at St John's College, Mthatha.

When Maya enrolled in the University of Transkei, she intended to register for a degree in medicine but was put off by a forensic medicine textbook that she happened to leaf through on registration day.

She studied towards a BProc instead, graduating in 1986.

She also clerked at the Mthatha firm of Dazana Mafungo Inc. between 1987 and 1988, and after graduation she took up work at the magistrate's court in Mthatha, where she was a court interpreter and then a public prosecutor.

Thereafter she attended the University of Natal, completing an LLB in 1988.

In 1989, Maya moved to Durham, North Carolina to attend Duke University School of Law on a Fulbright Scholarship, studying labour law, alternative dispute resolution, and constitutional law.

She later said that it was "mind-blowing" to leave apartheid-era South Africa for Duke.

After she graduated in 1990 with an LLM, she worked as policy counsel at the Women's Legal Defense Fund in Washington, D. C. from 1990 to 1991.

Upon her return to South Africa, Maya was an assistant state law adviser in Mthatha from 1991 to 1993, during which time she was also a part-time lecturer in law at the University of Transkei.

In 1993, she moved to Johannesburg to serve her pupillage, though she returned to the Transkei to practice after she was admitted as an advocate in 1994.

She practised at the Transkei Bar for five years.

According to Maya, she struggled to get briefs during her early years as an advocate and her practice depended on referrals from friends, particularly Nambitha Dambuza.

Born in the Eastern Cape, Maya began her legal career in the Transkei, working as a prosecutor and state law adviser until she was admitted as an advocate in 1994.

In 1999, she was appointed as an acting judge in the Mthatha High Court, the seat of the Transkei Division of the High Court of South Africa.

She later said that Dumisa Ntsebeza had encouraged her to join the bench.

She joined the bench in May 2000 as a judge of the Transkei Division of the High Court of South Africa and was elevated to the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2006.

President Thabo Mbeki appointed her to the Mthatha High Court in May 2000 and to the Supreme Court of Appeal in June 2006.

On 1 May 2000, Maya joined the bench permanently as a judge of the Transkei Division.

She also served as an acting judge in the Labour Court, the Bhisho High Court (Ciskei Division), and the Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth High Courts (Eastern Cape Division).

In February 2005, she was appointed as an acting judge in the Supreme Court of Appeal, and she remained at that court in Bloemfontein for over a year, until she was elevated permanently the following year.

On 12 May 2006, on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission, President Thabo Mbeki appointed Maya to a permanent seat in the Supreme Court of Appeal.

She took office in June 2006.

She was one of three women serving on the appellate bench at the time, the others being Judges Carole Lewis and Belinda van Heerden, and the first black woman ever to gain appointment as a judge of appeal.

She later remembered that she had been refused entrance to the courthouse on her first day, by a gardener who thought she was lost, and she said that, among her colleagues on the bench, "There are those who ignored me and showed in subtle and not so subtle ways I had no place in being here."

By the end of her tenure in the Supreme Court, Maya had over 200 reported judgments.

Maya was nominated unsuccessfully for elevation to the Constitutional Court in 2009 and 2012, and President Cyril Ramaphosa controversially declined to confirm her nomination as Chief Justice of South Africa in March 2022.

In September 2022, however, Ramaphosa appointed her as the first woman Deputy Chief Justice, in which capacity she deputises Raymond Zondo.

She was the president of the South African chapter of the International Association of Women Judges from 2018 to 2023, and she was appointed as the Chancellor of the University of Mpumalanga on 1 July 2021.

Her notable opinions included a dissent in Minister of Safety and Security v F: while the majority held that the state could not be held vicariously liable for a minor's rape by an off-duty police officer, Maya found otherwise, and the Constitutional Court upheld her dissent in 2012 in F v Minister of Safety and Security.

She was also noted for writing the court's unanimous judgment in AfriForum v Chairperson of the Council of the University of South Africa, a dispute about the language policy of the University of South Africa; it was the first recorded judgment of a superior court written in Xhosa.

She said that it had been inspired by Justice Johan Froneman's judgments in his own home language, Afrikaans.

The judgment was upheld in the Constitutional Court in Chairperson of the Council of the University of South Africa v AfriForum.

In the appellate court, she was elevated to the deputy presidency in September 2015 and the presidency in May 2017, succeeding Lex Mpati in both positions.

She was the first black woman to serve in the Supreme Court of Appeal, as well as the court's first woman deputy president and first woman president.

She was formerly the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal from 2017 to 2022.