Mr Speaker, Deputy President, members of this august Assembly, I am not using the crude vice of name dropping to claim any association closer to the Langa family than others. I had the opportunity to raise some issues of a judicial nature when I had the unenviable task of addressing both the memorial service and the funeral. I am neither hogging the platform nor "having a second bite at the cherry" in paying tribute to this gallant fighter for justice.
Having learned of his passing on, the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development immediately got tasked with some of the preparatory work with regard to the memorial service and the funeral that took place in Durban. In doing all this, we were asserting that the grief experienced by his loved ones could not be eliminated, but that it was to honour his impeccable legacy as a true son of the soil.
As the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development our work towards supporting the Langa family was made possible by the President when he formally declared the funeral of the late Chief Justice as a special official funeral. Once again, we would like to thank the hon President for the declaration as it duly recognised the pivotal role played by the late Chief Justice in shaping our early democratic jurisprudence. It was indeed a gesture befitting of a jurist who immensely contributed to our democratic transformation in addition to our jurisprudential maturity.
I feel the accolades will be incomplete if Chief Justice Langa was packaged in a one dimension judicial or legal framework. He was an amazing person on a personal level, and I use myself as an example of those who knew about his side of life and that of some members of his family.
Chief Justice Langa grew up in the apartheid South Africa and his life was shaped by the encounters that he and his generation had to endure at the hands of racial supremacy. He pulled himself through the arduous journey of distance education and climbed from the lowest ranks of the judiciary to the highest. Thirty-five years of an arduous journey from a shirt maker to a court clerk, a messenger and ultimately to a Chief Justice is the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. He was the irrepressible spirit reminiscent of our people's resolve to triumph over apartheid.
Born in 1939 in Bushbuckridge when the clouds of war were gathering in Europe, Chief Justice Langa grew up during the following trying times: the biggest black mineworkers strike of 1946; ascension to power of the apartheid government in 1948; defiant mood of the Defiance Campaign of 1952; Freedom Charter of 1955, women's march to the Union Buildings in 1956, Sharpville Massacre in 1960, Soweto rebellion of 1976 and many other events that shaped his life as a human rights activist and as a lawyer.
It was therefore logical that when the Constitutional Court was established, Justice Langa, together with 10 others, were appointed as the first judges of the new court by President Mandela. He became Deputy President of the Constitutional Court in August 1997 and in November 2001 assumed the position of Deputy Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa. He was appointed the country's Chief Justice and head of the Constitutional Court with effect from June 2005 and he retired in October 2009.
Through his contributions, together with other activist lawyers of that time, he was also instrumental in the formation of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers. This association graduated to the National Democratic Lawyers Association, which he served as President from 1988 until 1994. I had the pleasure of being part of this structure as the project co-ordinator in KwaZulu-Natal when I came out of jail in 1990. Justice Langa also served in the structures of the United Democratic Front. I have therefore all the right to refer to him as Comrade Pius.
Justice Langa was amongst those who took the risk, at the instruction of his organisation, to pioneer groundwork requisite to ensure the post-1990 negotiated settlement. It was a sigh of relief that common ground was found and that the South Africa for all was carefully but painstakingly negotiated at the talks about talks, the Groote Schuur and the Pretoria Minutes which paved the way for the first democratic elections. He participated in all these negotiations. He left this world a better place.
Langa himself assisted other states to fine-tune their own constitutions when he sat on the constitutional review commissions in Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Tanzania, and when he served as a Commonwealth Envoy for the democratisation of the Fiji Island; playing a pivotal role in the Lesotho elections for the Southern African Development Community, the SADC; as a member of the Police Board on the Transformation of the Police; and in the review of health legislation. The list is endless.
As a chair of the Judicial Service Commission, JSC, he highlighted the issue of transformation of the judiciary to represent the demographics of our country. The current JSC is continuing with this task, even though we know that there are forces that seek to reverse the gains that have been made since the late Chief Justice's time.
Mr Speaker, the late former Chief Justice Langa was not known for fearing unchartered territory. In trying to bring customary law within the fold of our Constitution, he made a ground-breaking judgment in the case of Bhe and Others v Khayelisha Magistrates and others. Citing the flexibility of our judicial system, he sought to bring customary law closer to our Constitution decrying, as he did, that the positive aspects of customary law having been neglected in our law.
As an outstanding member of the ANC in his own right, he could have chosen to turn a blind eye to some of the government offices' own mistakes. However, he chose to speak truth to power, giving his own party and the government the responsibility to uphold the values of the Constitution and leading by example.
I was glad to hear from Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke that the book on Chief Justice Langa's seminal judgments and opinions in matters of law will be off the press early next year.
I wish to issue a challenge to biographers to catalogue such achievements as Pius Langa's as an additional memory for prosperity. I have no issue with the quality of the biographies on our shelves, but it would be literary sacrilege if Pius Langa does not become the most sought-after biography of recent times.
As a country, we should be very proud to have had in our midst a humble giant whose indelible legacy will definitely inspire generations to come. We have the confidence that today Chief Justice Langa has rejoined his equally outstanding wife, Thandekile, in eternal peace.
Mr Speaker and the entire Langa family, the whole justice family, the legal profession and all South Africans, we have lost one of our greatest sons.
Akwehlanga lungehlanga. Hamba kahle Sothole, Sodumase, Madev' agqabul'inkomishi, Nyongo yendlovu, Gubhazi, Mlindeli, Somaphunga! Ngiyabonga. [Ihlombe.] (Translation of isiZulu paragraph follows.)
[None of us is spared this journey. Rest in peace Sothole, Sodumase, Madev' agqabul'inkomishi, Nyongo yendlovu, Gubhazi, Mlindeli, Somaphunga! (Clan names) Thank you. [Applause.]]