President Cyril Ramaphosa has honoured the late struggle veteran and human rights lawyer Advocate Dumalisile Philemon Pearce Nokwe with the posthumous conferral of the honorary title of Senior Counsel (Silk) for the Republic of South Africa.
The President has bestowed this conferral on the late Adv Nokwe on the eve of the esteemed legal practitioner’s reburial in West Park Cemetery, Johannesburg, tomorrow, Saturday, 17 May 2025.
He will be reburied along with his wife, Mrs Vuyiswa Malangabi-Nokwe who passed away in 2008.
She was a distinguished activist in her own right and had obtained a BSc and Bachelor of Education degree.
Advocate “Duma” Nokwe passed away in Zambia in 1978, at the age of 50. He had lived in exile since 1963. His mortal remains were repatriated to South Africa in 2024.
President Ramaphosa has accorded Adv Nokwe a Special Provincial Official Funeral and the President will deliver a tribute at tomorrow’s ceremony.
The posthumous honour bestowed on the first African advocate of the Supreme Court is a high honour that recognises Adv Nokwe’s expertise and contribution to the legal profession.
President Ramaphosa has conferred the status of Senior Counsel on Adv Nokwe in line with the provisions of the Legal Practice Act of 2014, which governs this status and sets out the criteria for its conferral.
In this instance, the Legal Practice Council and the Duma Nokwe Group of Advocates made an application to the President for the Adv Nokwe’s posthumous appointment as a Senior Counsel.
Adv Nokwe, who was born in 1927, obtained a BSc degree from the University of Fort Hare and a diploma in education with which he took up a teaching post in Krugersdorp.
His political activism led to imprisonment during the 1952 Defiance Campaign and his dismissal by the then Transvaal Education Department.
Following his participation in the 1953 World Youth Festival and visits to the then Soviet Union, China and Britain, the South African authorities imposed a banning and restriction order on him.
He subsequently studied law, obtained an LLB degree and became the first black advocate to be admitted to the Johannesburg Society of Advocates.
The Native Affairs Department of the time debarred him from taking chambers with his white colleagues in the Johannesburg city centre and this development led to Adv Nokwe devoting himself to the liberation struggle.
He was put on trial for treason and was subjected to banning orders, arrests and assault by the police.
He was elected Secretary-General of the African National Congress in 1958 and mobilised communities against apartheid until the underground leadership directed him to leave South Africa in January 1963.
Adv Nokwe campaigned against the apartheid state on global platforms including those of the Organisation of African Unity and African Union, and remained an activist until he passed in Lusaka in January 1978.
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