Opportunities and training that white senior lawyers gave to black lawyers during the height of apartheid paved the way for some of those black legal minds to become judges today, advocate JJ Strijdom said on Wednesday.
“I am a transformed person, especially when you look at our constitution, where you look at equality and humanity. Most of the laws from those days were inhumane. I regret that I was part of the system at that stage. Unfortunately, I was a prosecutor, I had to do my job and be loyal to the law ... but I can also say that in a lot of those public violence cases, at the end of the day, not many of them went to trial. Most of them were withdrawn.
“Since practising as an advocate and having a more objective view of the past, I realise that I’ve got regret,” he said.“I can do that with no hesitation and say I apologise for what we have done in the past,” Strijdom responded. Strijdom is one of 17 candidates being interviewed for 10 available positions in the Gauteng high court.
Strijdom had told the commission that 80% of his career had been around criminal law, with about 20% being on contracts and matrimonial law. He was not experienced in tax law, labour law and the like.
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