Johann Kriegler

The son of an Afrikaner professional soldier, Kriegler was born in Pretoria on 29 November 1932. He matriculated in 1949 at the King Edward VII School in Johannesburg and attended the South African Military Academy for two years thereafter. In 1954, he graduated with a BA degree from the University of Pretoria, where he was politically active as an opponent of the apartheid-era National Party government. After that, he completed his LLB in 1958, earned by correspondence through the University of South Africa while he was working as a judicial clerk. == Legal practice ==

In 1959, Kriegler was called to the Johannesburg Bar, where he practised as an advocate for the next 25 years; he took silk in 1972. He was a prominent trial lawyer with a varied client list that included poet Breyten Breytenbach, homeland leaders Mangosuthu Buthelezi and Lucas Mangope, activist cleric Beyers Naudé, white politicians Eschel Rhoodie and Eugene Terreblanche, and the Church of Scientology. Breytenbach, whom Kriegler defended against treason charges, described Kriegler in his memoir as "the rarest of all Afrikaners; a completely honest man profoundly inspired by humane principles". During his career as an advocate, Kriegler chaired the Johannesburg Bar Council in 1977 and 1980, and he also served a term as secretary of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa. At the same time, he was involved in human rights and public interest advocacy, particularly as a founding trustee of the Legal Resources Centre from 1978 to 1988 and as the founding chairperson of Lawyers for Human Rights from 1981. He also drafted the constitution of the Christian Institute, served as national president of Verligte Aksie, and served on the Transvaal board of the Urban Foundation. Kriegler later described himself as having been committed to free market capitalism: a "vehement opponent of socialism and certainly its extreme form of Marxism... [but] a human-rights lawyer, an anticommunist human-rights lawyer, with a fairly strong religious background to it". Of his involvement in advocacy, he said that, "I was not a revolutionary. I was perfectly happy... to agitate, to advocate, to bring pressure to bear, to try to bring conscience to bear on decent members of my own language group. To some extent it succeeded." == Supreme Court: 1984–1995 ==

Kriegler served intermittently as an acting judge between 1976 and 1983, and in 1984 he was appointed permanently as a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa. Defending Kriegler's human rights credentials, George Bizos pointed in particular to Kriegler's refusal to resign from the Legal Resources Centre, despite a contrary instruction from the apartheid government and Chief Justice Pierre Rabie. 1994 general election In December 1993, during the final stages of the negotiations to end apartheid, Kriegler was appointed as chairperson of the Independent Electoral Commission, which was tasked with administering South African's first elections under universal suffrage. Dikgang Moseneke was appointed as Kriegler's deputy. In Kriegler's summation, "Probably because we knew no better, we pulled it off." Shortly afterwards, in July 1994, the post-apartheid government appointed him as chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry into Unrest in Prisons. == Constitutional Court: 1995–2002 ==

Later in 1994, In the aftermath of the general election and pursuant to an interview with the Judicial Service Commission,''' and he served there until he retired from the judiciary on 29 November 2002, his 70th birthday. though he also argued extra-curially that it was not within any court's remit "to be seen or to aspire to being seen to be activist". pointing to his minority opinions in President v Hugo and Du Plessis v De Klerk as examples of his judicial "boldness". Indeed, in this role, Kriegler had increasingly strained relations with Mandela's African National Congress government: among other things, he was a vocal critic of the government's decision to strengthen voter identification requirements (in particular by requiring the universal use of bar-coded identification documents for voter registration), and in July 1998, he threatened to resign if the government did not augment the commission's budget. On 26 January 1999, ahead of that year's general election, Kriegler resigned from the Electoral Commission. he was harshly criticised by South African Justice Minister Penuell Maduna, who told the press that the extra-curial activities of Kriegler and Justice Richard Goldstone demonstrated that Constitutional Court justices were under-worked and lazy. == Retirement ==

After his retirement in November 2002, Kriegler spent two further years training South African aspirant judges, prosecutors, and advocates, Freedom Under Law and Hlophe dispute In 2008, Kriegler became the founding chairman of Freedom Under Law (FUL), a non-profit organisation newly established to promote the rule of law in Southern Africa through public advocacy and strategic litigation. Kriegler said that the decision was "gravely harmful to the rule of law". Kriegler had engaged in a minor public spat with Hlophe the prior month – after he made critical comments during a public lecture at Witwatersrand University – and FUL's announcement deepened the controversy. Three FUL members resigned from advisory positions in response: while Kgomotso Moroka and Cyril Ramaphosa said only that they had not been consulted on FUL's legal action, Dumisa Ntsebeza told the press that he was concerned about "the statements and words which are attributed to Judge Kriegler in the media. It's impossible to live with a very clear patronising attitude toward black people, which has become a recurring theme in his [Kriegler's] statements." Kriegler said that FUL would nonetheless proceed with the legal action, saying:I was frightened at the prospect, I am still frightened at the prospect, but fortunately I had an old boer grandfather who taught me as jou voet in die stiebeuel is moet jy ry [Afrikaans for 'when your foot is in the stirrup, you’ve got to ride']. We’ve got to go with it now... I am far too vain an old man to grow a thick skin, but all I can do is wrap myself in the blanket of duty.The resulting legal and disciplinary processes continued for over a decade. On 1 March 2021, the Sunday Times quoted Kriegler, speaking on behalf of FUL, as making further critical remarks about Hlophe, including the propositions that Hlophe was not fit to be a judge and that he had employed "contrived reasoning" in acquitting politician Bongani Bongo of corruption. Hlophe's lawyer, Vuyo Ngalwana, laid a complaint against Kriegler at the Judicial Service Commission, alleging that Kriegler had misconducted himself in making these remarks publicly. In July 2022, in a ruling penned by Judge Dumisani Zondi, the Judicial Conduct Committee found against Kriegler, ordering him to retract his statement. Kriegler retired from the board of Freedom Under Law on 30 July 2023, ceding the chairmanship to retired judge Azhar Cachalia. International consulting He also continued his engagements as an international consultant on electoral and judicial matters, including on behalf of the International Commission of Jurists, the United Nations Electoral Assistance Division, and the International Bar Association. and in 2010 he and Safwat Sidqi were the international members whom Afghan President Hamid Karzai appointed to the Electoral Complaints Commission which adjudicated disputes arising from the 2010 Afghan parliamentary election. == Awards and honours ==

In 2003, the General Council of the Bar of South Africa presented Kriegler with its Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award for Service to Law in Southern Africa, He is an honorary life member of the Johannesburg Bar and an honorary bencher of Gray's Inn, London. == Personal life ==

He has six children and three step-children. ==References==