Advisory Board Member: Justice Steven Majiedt

Justice Steven Arnold Majiedt is a current Justice of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of South Africa. He was appointed in 2019, leaving his seat at the Supreme Court of Appeal, where he was first appointed in 2010. Prior to this, Justice Majiedt was an advocate at the Northern Cape Society of Advocates, before his first judicial appointment at the Northern Cape High Court in Kimberley in 2000.

Justice Majiedt’s practising career was characterised by significant political work, and his ethos is primarily centred on advocating for the voiceless. During Justice Majiedt’s time as a judge of the Constitutional Court he has ruled on matters both complex and controversial – ranging from international criminal law to hate speech, citizenship, electoral law and the interpretation of statutory licensing requirements.

Justice Majiedt was born in Kenhardt, a small town in the Northern Cape, to parents who were both educators. His father was an activist committed to liberation in the region. When he was eight years old, his father was appointed as the principal of a primary school, leading the family to relocate to Barkly West. He matriculated at William Pescod High School in 1978 and completed a BA(Law) in 1981 followed by an LLB in 1983, both from the University of the Western Cape.

In 1984, upon completing his LLB, Justice Majiedt joined the Cape Bar and began work on the famous 5^th floor of Huguenot Chambers. This floor was notoriously known as the “ANC/UDF” floor, due to the political alignment of the advocates which composed its ranks. Justice Majiedt worked here alongside the likes of Adv. Dullah Omar, who later became his mentor. The same year that Justice Majiedt began practicing as an advocate, he was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship to complete an LLM at Stanford University in the USA, but on the advice of Adv Omar, chose not to take it up, but instead to remain in South Africa to contribute as a practising lawyer to the change in the country.

Justice Majiedt later joined the Northern Cape Premier’s Office as the Chief Legal Adviser for the Province from 1997 until 1999, before leaving again for practice. In 2000, while one year back in practice as an advocate in the Northern Cape Society of Advocates, he was appointed as judge in the Northern Cape High Court where he worked for 10 years, until 2010. In 2010 he was appointed to the Supreme Court of Appeal and also acted for short stint at the Constitutional Court from January to May 2014. On 11 September 2019 was appointed by the President Cyril Ramaphosa to the Constitutional Court.

Justice Majiedt considers many of the highlights of his career to be those moments working with people who have made an impact on him, including lawyer and minister, Adv. Dullah Omar, and several of the former Chief Justices of the Republic of South Africa, including Arthur Chaskalson; Ismail Mahomed; Pius Langa; and Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, as well as Justice Thembile Skweyiya and Judge President Bernard Ngoepe. Justice Majiedt attributes much of his experience to that which he gained from working with these individuals.

Another of Justice Majiedt’s career highlights was his role in assisting in the holding of South Africa’s first free and fair democratic elections in 1994, for which he travelled back to his home province, the Northern Cape, to fulfil this purpose. Shortly thereafter, Justice Majiedt spent time as Chief Legal Advisor assisting in ensuring that the Northern Cape became operational as a Constitutional Province with the appropriate structures of governance, before returning to his practice as an advocate.

Of course, Justice Majiedt’s appointments to the High Court in 2000, the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2010, and the Constitutional Court in 2019 are major highlights of his legal career. Justice Majiedt came to know Kohn well following their discussions after presentations at the Administrative Justice of Association of South Africa’s Reflections since Breakwater Conference, 2024 at which Kohn presented on the opening panel on legal developments at the public/private interface. Since then, she and Justice Majiedt have had many invigorating exchanges on the efforts still needed to strengthen the rule of law and constitutionalism in SA.