CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF CONSTITUTIONAL
DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH
AFRICA
Wednesday, April 13th, 2005
Invitation
On April 13, 2005, Dean Claudio Grossman and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law hosted a special dinner on the occasion of South Africa’s 10th Anniversary as a Constitutional Democracy. The Honorable Yvonne Mokgoro and the Honorable Kate O’Regan, two South African Constitutional Court Justices, were honored. This event was by invitation only.
The Honorable Yvonne Mokgoro
Yvonne Mokgoro was born on 19 October 1950 in Galeshewe Township near Kimberley and matriculated at the local St Boniface High School in 1970. She obtained the B.luris degree at the University of the North West in 1982, the LLB degree two years later, and completed her LLM in 1987. She also attended the University of Pennsylvania in the USA, where she was awarded a LLM degree.
She started her work-experience as a nursing assistant and later as a sales-person before her appointment as a clerk in the Department of Justice of the erstwhile Bophuthatswana.
After completion of her LLB degree she was appointed maintenance officer and public prosecutor in the then Mmabatho magistrate's court.
In 1984, Judge Mokgoro was appointed lecturer in the Department of Jurisprudence, University of the North West, where she rose through the ranks to Associate Professor. From 1992 to 1993 she served as Associate Professor at the University of the Western Cape, from where she moved to the Centre for Constitutional Analysis at the Human Sciences Research Council, serving as Specialist Researcher (Human Rights).
Throughout her legal career, she has written extensively, presented papers to and participated in a myriad of national and international conferences in South Africa and abroad, mainly in sociological jurisprudence and particularly on human rights, customary law, focusing on the impact of law on society generally, and on women and children specifically. She has served extensively as a resource person in this regard for non-governmental and community based organisations and initiatives.
She is married and has four children, three boys between the ages 19 - 23 years and one ten year old girl.
The Honorable Kate O’Regan
Kate O'Regan was born in Liverpool, England on 17 September 1957 and grew up in Cape Town where she matriculated from Springfield Convent in 1974. She obtained her LLB degree cum laude from the University of Cape Town in 1980, and an LLM degree with first class honours from the University of Sydney in 1981.
From 1982 - 1985 she worked for a firm of attorneys in Johannesburg specialising in labour law and land rights. During this time she was an executive member of the Industrial Aid Society, an advice officer for the unemployed, as well as a roster lawyer for Actstop and the Black Sash.
Thereafter she spent three years at the London School of Economics obtaining a PhD. Her research was on interdicts restraining strike actions. In mid -1988, Judge O'Regan joined the Labour Unit at UCT as a senior researcher. In 1990 she was appointed a senior lecturer in the law faculty at UCT where she taught civil procedure, evidence, labour law and introduced a course on "Women in the Legal System". In 1992 she was promoted to associate professor. During her years at UCT; she was a founder member of both the Institute of Development Law and the Law, Race and Gender Research Project. In 1992 she also became a trustee of the Legal Resources Centre.
Justice O'Regan has written articles for a wide range of academic journals and newspapers on matters relating to labour law, land and housing, race and gender equality and Constitutional Law.
She is married and has two children.
