BY Nkosazana Ngwadla
Professor David McQuoid-Mason has received an ALM Law.Com International African Legal 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Corporate Counsel Association of South Africa (CCASA).
The awards ceremony in Johannesburg, which formed part of the International Corporate Counsel awards for different categories of law firms and lawyers in Africa, was attended by more than 300 lawyers.
McQuoid-Mason was introduced by one of the judges for the awards and a former student of his, Ms Ntsako Msomi, who is Senior Legal Counsel at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), and a UKZN graduate.
In his acceptance speech McQuoid-Mason said the occasion coincided with the 50th anniversary of his founding of the UKZN Campus Law Clinic, which has led to him helping establish Law clinics in more than 60 countries in Africa and world-wide as well as Street Law programmes in over 45 countries. Added to that, it was the 40th anniversary of when he became Dean of Law at UKZN which ‘led him to Nelson Mandela’ and participation in the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Mass Democratic Movement (MDM)during the struggle years.
He paid tribute to former recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award, all of whom he knew personally and admired, including:
• Justice Albie Sachs, who he met in Harare in 1989, not long after Sachs had been badly hurt in a car bomb explosion in Mozambique.
• Advocate George Bizos, who he met in the early 1980s and served with as Chair of the Durban Chapter of Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR), when Bizos was National Chair.
• Former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, who he met when the Black Lawyers Association and the Democratic Lawyers Association were negotiating to form the National Association of Democratic Lawyers in 1985, and when Justice Moseneke received an Honorary Doctorate from the then University of Natal.
• Advocate Thuli Madonsela, who he met in the 1980s, and who once publicly chided him (with a twinkle in her eye), for threatening to report her to the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) if she did not deal with the “hit squads” operating out of Glebelands Hostel in Durban.
• Former Chief Justice Moegeng Moegeng, who was one of McQuoid-Mason’s high-achieving LLB students in the mid-80s, and the first Black African to participate in a Moot Final.
• Justice Edwin Cameron, whom he knew from the 1980s, and shared a meal with at the home of the First Secretary of the Cuban Embassy, who showed a video on how Fidel Castro had directed the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, in which the Cubans claimed victory, and which led to the withdrawal of all South African and foreign troops from Angola, and a negotiated settlement for Namibia’s first democratic Election in 1989, which McQuoid-Mason monitored.
McQuoid-Mason mentioned that shortly before the ceremony he had spoken to one of his ex-students, Mr Greg Nott of Norton Rose Attorneys who had acted pro bono for athlete Castor Semenya for many years, and for whom McQuoid-Mason had provided an opinion on medico-aspects for her partly successful appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in connection with gender issues.
Speaking at the awards ceremony, McQuoid-Mason said there were four things that impressed him greatly: (1) the high number of entries received for the awards from law firms and individuals from all over Africa; (2) how many so-called “White” South African law firms, were empowering and promoting young Black African lawyers, and elevating some to very senior positions; (3) that some South African law firms had branches in other parts of Africa; and (4) about 20 of his ex-Law students, many of whom are now in very senior positions, had congratulated him on his award.
Image and source: UKZN
