Kathleen Satchwell, commonly known as Kathy Satchwell, is a

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

of the Gauteng Division of the High Court (formerly the

South Gauteng High Court The Gauteng Division of the High Court of South Africa is a superior court of law which has general jurisdiction over the South African province of Gauteng and the eastern part of North West province. The main seat of the division is at Pretoria, ...

) in South Africa.

Biography

She was educated at Rhodes University in the 1960s. She was a prominent human rights attorney in the 1990s. Satchwell was also involved with court cases of the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC) and of people connected to the killing of

Stompie Moeketsi James Seipei (1974 – 1 January 1989), also known as Stompie Moeketsi or Stompie Sepei, was a teenage United Democratic Front (UDF) activist from Parys in South Africa. He and three other boys were kidnapped on 29 December 1988 by members of ...

, in the period 1990–1992.Fred Brigland: ''Katiza's journey. Beneath the surface of South Africa's shame''. London, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1997. She gave evidence before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on the role of the legal system in contributing to the violations of human rights in

South Africa under apartheid Apartheid (, especially South African English: , ; , "aparthood") was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. Apartheid was ...

. In 1999 she was appointed by President

Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...

to be Chairperson of the Road Accident Fund Commission. In September 2001 in the case named ''

Satchwell v President of the Republic of South Africa ''Satchwell v President of the Republic of South Africa and Another'' is a 2002 decision of the Constitutional Court of South Africa which determined that the same-sex life partner of a judge was entitled to the same financial benefits available ...

'', Satchwell, an open

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

, won the right for her partner to enjoy the same benefits as those previously reserved for spouses of married heterosexual judges. This right was confirmed by the Constitutional Court in 2002. This decision is seen as one of five key decisions that set the legal status of same-sex couples in South Africa before the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

References

20th-century births LGBT judges South African lesbians Living people Rhodes University alumni South African women judges South African women lawyers 20th-century South African lawyers 21st-century South African lawyers Year of birth missing (living people) 20th-century women lawyers 21st-century women lawyers {{LGBT-bio-stub