Nonkosi Zoliswa Mhlantla (born 2 May 1964) is a South African judge of the

Constitutional Court A constitutional court is a high court that deals primarily with constitutional law. Its main authority is to rule on whether laws that are challenged are in fact unconstitutional, i.e. whether they conflict with constitutionally established ...

. Elevated to that court in December 2015, she was formerly a judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal between December 2008 and November 2015. She entered legal practice as an attorney in her hometown, Port Elizabeth, and joined the bench in June 2002, becoming the first woman ever to be appointed to the

Eastern Cape Division The Eastern Cape Division of the High Court of South Africa is a superior court of law with general jurisdiction over the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. The main seat of the division is at Makhanda, with subordinate local seats at Port Eli ...

of the

High Court of South Africa The High Court of South Africa is a superior court of law in South Africa. It is divided into nine provincial divisions, some of which sit in more than one location. Each High Court division has general jurisdiction over a defined geographical ...

Early life and career

Mhlantla was born on 2 May 1964 in Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape. She grew up in the Port Elizabeth

townships A township is a kind of human settlement or administrative subdivision, with its meaning varying in different countries. Although the term is occasionally associated with an urban area, that tends to be an exception to the rule. In Australia, C ...

of KwaZakhele and New Brighton. In 1982, she matriculated at Kenneth Masekela High School in KwaThema, a township outside Springs in the former

Transvaal Transvaal is a historical geographic term associated with land north of (''i.e.'', beyond) the Vaal River in South Africa. A number of states and administrative divisions have carried the name Transvaal. * South African Republic (1856–1902; af, ...

, and she went on to the

University of the North The University of Limpopo is a university in the Limpopo Province, South Africa. It was formed on 1 January 2005, by the merger of the University of the North and the Medical University of South Africa (MEDUNSA). These previous institutions form ...

, where she completed a BProc in 1987. Between 1990 and 2002, she practised as an attorney in Port Elizabeth, running her own firm named N. Mhlantla & Associates. As a junior attorney, she handled some criminal matters, including

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 ...

-era political trials, but she focused primarily on civil,

labour Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

, and arbitration matters. During this period, she served briefly as an acting judge in the

, filling a vacancy in the

between April and September 2000; she also served as a commissioner in

Small Claims Court Small-claims courts have limited jurisdiction to hear civil cases between private litigants. Courts authorized to try small claims may also have other judicial functions, and go by different names in different jurisdictions. For example, it may ...

Eastern Cape High Court: 2002–2008

Mhlantla was appointed permanently to the Eastern Cape High Court on 1 June 2002. She was the first woman to be appointed to that bench in its 138-year history. Towards the end of her six-year tenure in the High Court, from June 2007 to November 2008, she was seconded as an acting judge to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Supreme Court of Appeal: 2008–2015

In August 2008, Mhlantla was shortlisted as one of several candidates to fill one of two permanent vacancies in the Supreme Court of Appeal. She was appointed by President Kgalema Motlanthe later that year. Throughout 2013, she served as an acting judge in the Constitutional Court of South Africa, during absences by Justice

Edwin Cameron Edwin Cameron SCOB (born 15 February 1953 in Pretoria) is a retired judge who served as a Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is well known for his HIV/AIDS and gay-rights activism and was hailed by Nelson Mandela as "one ...

, Justice

Johann van der Westhuizen Johann van der Westhuizen (born 26 May 1952 in Windhoek, South West Africa (now Namibia) is a former judge of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. Before his judicial appointment, he was a professor at the University of Pretoria Faculty of ...

, and Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng. During that period, she wrote several majority judgements for the Constitutional Court.

Constitutional Court: 2015–present

In June 2015, the Judicial Service Commission announced that Mhlantla was one of four candidates who had been shortlisted for possible appointment to fill a permanent vacancy on the Constitutional Court. The seat had formerly belonged to retired Justice

Thembile Skweyiya Thembile Skweyiya (17 June 1939 – 1 September 2015) was brother of Zola Skweyiya and he was a South African Constitutional Court judge from 2003 to 2014. Skweyiya attended primary school in Cape Town, but later attended boarding school at the H ...

, and commentators had criticised the delay in appointing Skweyiya's replacement. The other candidates were also women –

Dhaya Pillay Dhayanithie Pillay (born 5 January 1958) is a South African judge of the Labour Court and KwaZulu-Natal High Court. Early life Pillay was born in Durban in 1958 and completed her B.Proc at UNISA in 1982. Early in her career as an attorney, ...

Leona Theron Leona Valerie Theron (born 7 November 1966 in Durban) is a judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa and formerly of the Supreme Court of Appeal. She was first appointed to the bench in 1999, aged 33, becoming the first black woman judg ...

, and Zukisa Tshiqi – but Mhantla was the most experienced among them. She was nominated to the position by the National Association for Democratic Lawyers, of which was a founding member, and she was viewed as "a safe choice on the constitutional interpretation front", given her record of moderate judgements. Her interview took place in July in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

. On 9 November 2015, President Jacob Zuma announced that he would appoint Mhlantla to the Constitutional Court bench, with effect from 1 December. When Justice Sisi Khampepe retired in 2021, she became the longest-serving woman in the Constitutional Court.

Personal life

Mhlantla is a single mother to an adult daughter.

References

External links

N. Z. Mhlantla
at Judges Matter
Application
to the Constitutional Court {{DEFAULTSORT:Mhlantla, Nonkosi Living people 1964 births University of Limpopo alumni People from Port Elizabeth Judges of the Constitutional Court of South Africa 20th-century South African lawyers 21st-century South African lawyers South African women judges South African women lawyers 20th-century women lawyers 21st-century women lawyers