From Gazankulu to the Pretoria High Court Chambers - how a rural girl became top legal mind

10 February 2016 - 17:00 By Roxanne Henderson
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Forty years ago, Gandlanani in the former homeland of Gazankulu was a village where girl children were not schooled, married off at thirteen and subjected to extreme poverty.

Image: Thulani Mbele
Image: Thulani Mbele
Image: Thulani Mbele

But there were exceptions, like Nana Makhubele who last year became the first black African woman to chair a society of advocates in South Africa.

Though Makhubele knew the struggles of poverty very well, her mother and a fortunate series of circumstances set her on another path.

“Being a girl and depending on how soon you reached puberty, you will undergo a compulsory female ritual. We [call it] uKomba. It's like a female version of the male circumcision. We don't go to the mountains, [uKomba] happens in the families," Makhubele explained the tradition of her childhood home.

“When you've finished that, what can you do next? Because you're not going to school, you get married.

"I would have gotten married around the age of 12 or 13 but my mother said: 'No, you're going to school'.”

Seated at a boardroom table in her tenth-floor office at the Pretoria High Court Chambers, her petite stature elevated by her towering head wrap, Makhubele credits her mother and the transformative power of education with her rise from rural girl to senior counsel.

“People always ask me who my role-model is – and we always think of these glamorous women we've never met – but for me it is my mother. She never went to school but somehow she knew [the importance of education].”

Makhubele, who started her legal career as a prosecutor at the Giyani Magistrate's Court in Limpopo, holds degrees in social work and law from the University of the North, known today as the University of Limpopo, and the University of the Witwatersrand.

But the road to success was fraught with difficulty.

Makhubele jokes that she took a gap year – but not the kind that involves volunteering at a kibbutz and savouring the freedoms of new-found adulthood.

“My parents could not afford to pay for [my] secondary education. What compounded their financial woes is the fact that I caught up with my elder brother after being promoted [at primary school]. As a result, we both passed standard six in the same year.”

At the age of 12, Makhubele had to leave school and work as a domestic worker in the home of the village school's principal. She also occasionally worked in local tomato fields when she could sneak into a farmer's truck with the regular workers.

The following year, when her eldest brother matriculated and started working, he moved her to the town of Giyani and put her through school.

At first, she lived with relatives but they provided only a roof over her head.

“For meals I had to walk three times a day – [breakfast], lunch and supper – to where my brother was staying to share a meal with him.”

The next year, she stayed with another family until a bursary from the South African Council of Churches enabled her to live at her school's boarding house.

Makhubele's interest in law was first piqued at school when her classmates complained that they did not know how Latin, a newly-introduced subject at the school, would be useful.

Their teacher explained that it would be handy for a career in law and Makhubele decided it was the job for her – not that she knew anything about law, she just wanted to be different.

“You don't want to do what everybody else is doing [when] everyone else is thinking about going to be a teacher or a nurse,” she chuckles.

This desire to be different appears to have persevered.

The silk (senior counsel) does not take on criminal or family law cases, with family law often seen as the territory of female advocates, she said.

Being able to choose her cases was a luxury not easily earned. When Makhubele first joined the bar, she took all cases to stay in business, she said.

"Being in legal practice as a black person has its challenges. We don't get work from commercial law firms."

Makhubele said a lack of exposure and opportunity is what makes it tough for black and women advocates to stay in practice and eventually achieve senior status.

As she prepares to step down at the end of February after serving her year as chairperson of the Pretoria Bar, Makhubele said transformation was her biggest challenge in the position.

She believed the only way to turn the tide is through deliberate empowerment of black and women advocates.

"We need to ensure black pupils are admitted [to the Bar] in numbers and make sure they remain in practice."

After all, it was through a series of interventions that Makhubele escaped child marriage and the hardships of rural life in Gandlanani. That and her never-say-die attitude.

"At a young age I worked as a domestic worker but I never took it personally. I still don't,” she said.

“That year made me strong. I never gave up.”

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