Sisi Virginia Khampepe (born 8 January 1957) is a retired judge of the

Constitutional Court of South Africa The Constitutional Court of South Africa is a supreme court, supreme constitutional court established by the Constitution of South Africa, and is the apex court in the South African judicial system, with general jurisdiction. The Court was fi ...

Background

Khampepe was born in

Soweto Soweto () is a township of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality in Gauteng, South Africa, bordering the city's mining belt in the south. Its name is an English syllabic abbreviation for ''South Western Townships''. Formerly a s ...

. She obtained her B Proc from the

University of Zululand The University of Zululand or UniZulu is the only comprehensive tertiary educational institution north of the Tugela River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Its new status is in accordance with South Africa's National Plan for Higher Education ...

and her LLM degree at

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

. She was admitted as an attorney in 1985 and worked at

Bowman Gilfillan Bowmans, previously Bowman Gilfillan, is a law firm based in Sandton, Johannesburg, South Africa, with offices in Cape Town, Dar es Salaam, Durban, Kampala, Lilongwe, Lusaka, Moka District, Moka and Nairobi. It is one of the "Big Five law firms ...

in private practice, specialising in labour law. In 1995 she was appointed a member of the

Truth and Reconciliation Commission A truth commission, also known as a truth and reconciliation commission or truth and justice commission, is an official body tasked with discovering and revealing past wrongdoing by a government (or, depending on the circumstances, non-state act ...

. From 1999 she was Deputy National Director of Public Prosecutions in the

National Prosecuting Authority The National Prosecution Authority (NPA) is the agency of the South African government responsible for state prosecutions. Under Section 179 of the Constitution and the National Prosecuting Authority Act of 1998, which established the NPA in 199 ...

Appointments

In 2000 Khampepe was appointed as a judge of the

Transvaal Provincial Division 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, ...

of the High Court, (now known as the

Gauteng Division 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 2007 she was also appointed to the Labour Appeal Court, and in 2009 she was appointed to the Constitutional Court by President

Jacob Zuma Jacob Gedleyihlekisa Zuma (; born 12 April 1942) is a South African politician who served as the fourth president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018. He is also referred to by his initials JZ and clan name Msholozi, and was a former anti-aparth ...

.In 2021 she was appointed as the acting chief justice of the apex court.

References

Judges of the Constitutional Court of South Africa South African barristers 1957 births Living people South African women in politics Constitutional court women judges South African women judges South African women lawyers 20th-century South African lawyers 21st-century South African judges University of Zululand alumni Harvard Law School alumni 20th-century women lawyers 21st-century women judges {{SouthAfrica-law-bio-stub