Arthur Chaskalson, South Africa Chief Judge, Dies
Pioneering Jurist: Judge Arthur Chas kalson swears in Thabo Mbeki as South Africa?s president. The Jewish jurist died at 81. Image by getty images
Leaders of South Africa and the country’s Jewish community mourned the death of jurist and anti-apartheid activist Arthur Chaskalson.
Chaskalson, who became the first president of South Africa’s post-apartheid Constitutional Court and the country’s chief justice, died Dec. 1 in Johannesburg at the age of 81. The cause of his death was reported to be leukemia.
“Judge Chaskalson epitomized the qualities of integrity, compassion and an unbending commitment to justice for all,” the South African Jewish Board of Deputies said in a statement. “He brought honor to the legal profession and the bench, as well as to the Jewish community with which he always identified.”
Chaskalson’s official funeral in Johannesburg on Monday was attended by South Africa’s president, Jacob Zuma, and immediate past president, Thabo Mbeki, among other prominent figures. The two men donned yarmulkes and joined other mourners in taking turns shoveling dirt onto Chaskalson’s grave in accordance with Jewish custom.
“On behalf of all South Africans, we reach out to his wife and family as we salute a life inseparable from South Africa’s march to freedom,” Zuma said in a statement.
National flags in South Africa were ordered to fly at half-mast for Chaskalson through Friday.
Chaskalson was a member of the defense team in the 1963-64 Rivonia Trial, in which the apartheid regime tried Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress activists. Over the next several decades, Chaskalson continued to battle as a lawyer against apartheid.
In 1994, after the country’s transition to a multiracial democracy, Chaskalson became the first president of South Africa’s new Constitutional Court. In 2001, his title was changed to chief justice of South Africa, a position he held until he retired in 2005.
He served as president of the International Commission of Jurists from 2001 to 2012.
In January 2009, Chaskalon joined several other prominent South African Jews in a statement that condemned Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza as “inhumane and disproportionate.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
