I have read in the media these past 24 hours about allegations of a distant past involving Jeremy Gauntlett SC KC. I choose to say nothing on the subject but to pay tribute to the Jeremy Gauntlett I know. Of course, you may know a different Gauntlett. Mine is not to erase, or detract from, yours.

There are people on this Earth who cannot be described only by words. Jeremy Gauntlett is one of them.

Nevertheless, with an English vocabulary that is far less adequate than Jeremy’s own vast repertoire, I feel the need to pay a personal tribute to a man who – perhaps unknown to him – has over many years inspired me to strive for excellence in my craft not only as a practitioner at the Bar but also in my intermittent role as an acting judge in the High Court and Labour Court.

I cannot, with a straight face, claim to have achieved that excellence – yet – probably because of what I later came to realise was a premature exit from the proximity and his professional influence that the many briefs through which I laboured as his “raw junior” afforded me.

If memory fails me not, I first encountered Jeremy in the Spring of 1997. (One does not “meet” Jeremy; one “encounters” him. It is no exaggeration to say the man is a phenomenon.) With my vast experience of some 6 months at the Cape Bar, I was imposed on him as his junior by Dumisa Ntsebeza SC in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) brief against the National Party of FW de Klerk. Ntsebeza SC was head of the TRC amnesty investigations committee at the time.

It soon came to my attention that Jeremy had allegedly excoriated the instructing attorney for briefing him with “a raw junior”. If indeed he had characterised me as such, he’d be right of course. But in 1997, a strapping lad in his late 20s – and with a Boxer’s temperament to boot – that is not how I saw matters. I was outraged by this label and resolved to confront him.

As I marched to his chambers across Keerom Street, loins firmly girded, it occurred to me to first share my “experience” with a friend, Theko Mabona, a fellow articled clerk at a large firm (by Cape Town standards at the time) some 4 years previously. Theko put things in perspective: “But you ARE raw to him, Ngalwana. The only way to demonstrate that you are not, is by the quality of the work you give him.”

And so it was, that by that auspicious intervention I spared myself the indignity that Jeremy’s legendary quick tongue would no doubt have bestowed on my relatively young self. I must have done as instructed by Theko because I subsequently found myself labouring through more junior briefs for Jeremy, including trips to the Supreme Court of Appeal.

In a word, the Jeremy Gauntlett I know is a man of sharp intellect, a voracious reader of material that matters, surgical advocacy skills, a quick tongue, quick wit, a vast English vocabulary and deft turn of phrase that would disarm even the most intransigent adversary, more self-assuredness than arrogance, mild-mannered and humility-free. And for this last virtue, I don’t fault him. To a man with an intelligence quotient that flirts with the stratosphere, humility is in my view a wasted trait.

He may not be aware of this, but Jeremy is responsible for the advocates’ organisation now named Advocates For Transformation (AFT) bearing that name. The original idea, when we formed the organisation in April 1998, was to name it Democratic Advocates For Transformation (DAFT). In fact, we had done, until Norman Arendse SC, Anwar Albertus SC, Ismail Jamie SC and I went triumphantly to introduce ourselves to Jeremy who I think was chairman of the Cape Bar or played some other senior role in the Cape Bar structures at the time. The man laughed the “D” out of “DAFT”, and so thenceforth we became AFT.

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That Jeremy, on no less than four occasions, did not get the nod – twice for the Constitutional Court berth and twice for the High Court bench – is in my view more a reflection on the diversity intolerance of the selection panel of that time than on his unsuitability. The suggestion that “humility” and “temperament” are indispensable traits for judicial appointment in South Africa is laughable. I have read judgments over the years by senior judges which would make Jeremy’s “temperament” the stuff of altar boys by comparison. At worst, he wouldn’t be a unicorn on the “temperament” stakes. There are counsel who talk of having endured much abuse at the hands of permanent judges in court for reasons that have less to do with the merits of their case but more to do with the judges’ own inarticulate premise.

The lack of discernment to appoint a man of such sharp intellect and potentially invaluable contribution to South Africa’s constitutional and commercial jurisprudence was a major loss to the country. Jeremy’s appointment – as with the appointment of Judges David Unterhalter and Malcolm Wallis – could very well have encouraged commercial litigants to trust the courts more, and reduce privatisation of commercial litigation in arbitrations, a practice that stunts the development of South Africa’s commercial jurisprudence.

It is an enduring shame that factional Politics – having nothing to do with the desire to effect change for the better in our courts – should block an obvious talent from ascending to the bench and, with that, deprive our commercial and constitutional jurisprudence of the development that it so sorely needs.

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On transformation of the Bar, the Jeremy Gauntlett I know has made a contribution, but not nearly enough. Again, if memory fails me not, it was during his term as Chairman of the Cape Bar Council that, for the first time in the history of the Cape Bar, there was equal Black representation on the Cape Bar Council (although AFT’s representation was not accepted on a race basis but rather on an “interest group” basis.) This included Jeremy sharing his chairmanship with Anwar Albertus SC who had been nominated by AFT and confirmed by the AGM, not without gusty winds from the right against that proposition. Nominated by AFT, I served on that Council as the Cape Bar’s first ever Black Treasurer.

He twice served on a 2-person committee (with Ishmael Semenya SC) of the General Council of the Bar of South Africa (GCB) charged with exploring challenges that face Black and women advocates at the Bar, and to report back to the GCB with a view to having these addressed. I later became critical of the second time this committee was set up, as the first had not yielded any tangible fruit that I could see. But, at least the thought suggests to me that the man is not entirely numb or apathetic to the plight of others less fortunate than he.

When I was elected Chairman of the GCB in 2016, Jeremy was one of the first colleagues to offer his help when needed, knowing full well what my transformation agenda was at the time.

However, his role in the early years of what culminated in the impeachment of Western Cape High Court Judge President Hlophe is, for me, his purgatory. But, with the benefit of hindsight, the Judge President’s goose was already cooked even if Jeremy had not entered the fray. Those who were determined to have the Judge President removed as a Judge were – as we were later to witness – to stop at nothing to achieve their goal. Ultimately, they did.

He could no doubt also have done more to “blood” Black and women juniors in consequential briefs as he did me. But since I left the Cape Bar for Johannesburg more than 23 years ago and have not kept pace with transformation efforts in that Cape colony since, I have no direct knowledge of how he has since fared on this score.

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This is the Jeremy Gauntlett I know. A man from whom I learnt a strong work ethic, self-confidence, self-assuredness (although in my case it could well be termed “arrogance”) and who watered in me the seeds of my determination to succeed at the Bar.

Along with Norman Arendse SC, Belinda van der Vyver (my pupil mentor), Jan Heunis SC, Henri Viljoen SC and Willie Burger SC, I probably would not have made the relative success of my practice as I have done without his positive role in my early years of development at the Bar.

Jeremy, you have much to live for and contribute to the profession and beyond still. I personally owe you a word of gratitude and hope you receive it from whence it comes: the bottom of my heart.

The End

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