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Judge Aubrey Phago Ledwaba

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  • Judge Aubrey Phago Ledwaba

Capacity: Judge
First appointed: November 2005 (Gauteng High Court, Pretoria)
Further appointment: May 2013 (Deputy Judge President)
Gender:  Male
Ethnicity: African
Date of Birth: October 1962
Qualifications: B.Proc (1984)(University of Limpopo)

Key judgments:

Candidate Biography (updated April 2026):

Judge Aubrey Ledwaba is Deputy Judge President of the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria.

First starting off as a state prosecutor (1983-1984), Ledwaba spent 21 years from 1984 to 2005 in private practice as a candidate attorney, attorney, partner and director at law firms, including his own, A.P. Ledwaba Inc.

During that time, he served as a founding member of the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) and a councilmember of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces (1999 – 2005).

At the relatively tender age of 43, Ledwaba was elevated to the bench as a judge of the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, which was still white-male dominated.

As a judge, Ledwaba has written several important judgments, including Gupta v Knoop NO, which dealt with the then relatively novel issue of the grounds of removal for a business rescue practitioner (BRP). The BRP in question is Mr Kurt Knoop, who was placed in charge of several of the companies of the sprawling Gupta empire, which was accused of masterminding state capture. When their schemes unravelled, the key protagonists fled to Dubai as international fugitives. The applicant in this case, a member of the Gupta family, complained that Knoop and his fellow BRPs were not acting according to the required standard and wanted them removed. After analysing the statutory framework against the facts of this case, Ledwaba found that there were credible allegations of impropriety, including conflicts of interest, against Knoop and his fellow BRPs, which showed that they had not acted in accordance with the statutory standard, and therefore should be removed. When Knoop filed an urgent appeal application, Ledwaba granted a further order that the removal order be executed immediately despite the appeal. On appeal to the SCA, Ledwaba’s judgment was reversed, with the SCA finding that, on the evidence, there were no grounds for the removal of the BRPs in terms of the statute. Furthermore, the execution order should not have been granted.

Ledwaba has also served as an acting judge in the appellate courts.

He served as an acting justice of the Constitutional Court from January to June 2019, where he wrote the unanimous judgment in Moyo v Minister of Police, striking down key parts of the Intimidation Act as an unconstitutional violation of freedom of expression.

Writing for a unanimous court, Ledwaba found that Section 1(1)(b) aimed to criminalise conduct and expressive acts which violated the rights to dignity, personal freedom and security.

“Intimidatory conduct that negates these rights has no place in an open and democratic society that promotes democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights.” It was, however, necessary for rights of dignity and security to be balanced with the right to freedom of expression,” Ledwaba held.

He also served as an acting judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal from December 2019 to May 2021.

Advocates for Transformation credit Ledwaba with a ‘sustained commitment’ to the transformation of both the legal profession and the judiciary. They note that Ledwaba’s membership of NADEL during its infancy and building and sustaining its Pretoria branch. This also includes serving on the council of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces “during a period which the profession was undergoing significant structural change”.

AFT also note that Ledwaba has maintained professional affiliations with an international dimension, including holding membership of the International Association of Refugee Law Judges since 2009, and the SA Chapter of the International Association of Women Judges (since 2020).

Ledwaba has served on numerous bodies within the judiciary, including as a member of the Judicial Caseflow Management Committee, the Interpreter’s Capacitation Committee, and the Alternative Dispute Resolution Advisory Committee of the SA Law Reform Commission.

Significantly, Ledwaba has long service as a member of the Magistrates Commission, initially as an ordinary member nominated by the legal profession (2003-2005) and later as chairperson (since 2019).

Over many years, Ledwaba has enjoyed an impressive public reputation as an attorney, judge, deputy judge president, acting justice and currently acting judge president.

However, his name has recently been brought into controversy by the October 2025 testimony by to police witnesses ( ‘Witness A’ and ‘Witness B’) at the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry into Infiltration of the Criminal Justice System. The witnesses state that there was alleged impropriety in Judge Ledwaba’s handling of a bail appeal application involving alleged underworld boss Katiso ‘KT’ Molefe. Other than stating that Molefe had allegedly set aside R2 million as a bribe for a nebulous group of ‘police, prosecutors, and judicial officers’, and remarks about Ledwaba’s questions at the bail appeal hearing, none of the police witnesses have produced any evidence to substantiate these explosive allegations.

In his application to the JSC, signed on 5 December 2025, Ledwaba strongly denies the allegations, labelling them as ‘unreliable’, ‘unsupported’ ‘, hearsay’ and ‘conjecture’. He confirms that he has written to the Madlanga Commission, which replied that it would deal with these allegations ‘fairly and responsibly’ in the interim report to be filed in December 2025, and a final report issued before the JSC interviews in April 2026. The Madlanga Commission’s interim report has not been made public, nor has Judge Ledwaba been invited by the commission to either submit a written statement or testify orally. None of the police witnesses has also been called to substantiate their allegations.  It is therefore unclear how the JSC will approach these allegations.

As the sole candidate for the position of Judge President of the Gauteng High Court, the largest and busiest court division in South Africa, Ledwaba faces a daunting task. But having served as second-in-command since 2013, and now acting in the role, he might have a trump card up his sleeve.

 

April 2026 Interview

After deliberations, the Judicial Service Commission has resolved to recommend Judge Aubrey Phago Ledwaba for appointment as Judge President of the Gauteng High Court.

April 2021 Interview Video

April 2021 Interview Synopsis

In recent years, there has been an onslaught against the judiciary by critics ranging from a discredited former president to political leaders with fascist tendencies and social networking platform trolls and bots.

The allegations have never been substantiated with evidence but have achieved a measure of their original intention — to discredit and undermine the most functional arm of government through insinuation and rumour, while pushing the narrative of a “captured judiciary” in public. In doing so, South Africa’s functioning democracy itself remains in a precarious position.

Gauteng Deputy Judge President Aubrey Ledwaba has been one of those judges who has had to contend with relentless attacks against his integrity and independent-mindedness by powerful people, so it was unsurprising that this dominated an interview that lasted just over an hour.

Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) President Mandisa Maya addressed the allegations of corruption early on in Ledwaba’s interview when, after noting their presence asked him: “Are you a corrupt judge?”

Ledwaba answered in the negative before Maya asked him to explain his role in a matter from which allegations of impropriety against him emanated: his sealing from public access third-party information related to the funding of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s “CR17” campaign to become ANC president in 2017.

This had happened after Ramaphosa had applied to the North Gauteng High Court to set aside the findings of Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s report on the CR17 funding in 2019.

Ramaphosa’s lawyers had asked that the information be sealed from public access in a pre-trial meeting at Ledwaba’s chambers. Ledwaba had done so, and Mkhwebane did not challenge this in court before the main matter was heard.

The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) did eventually apply to the court to have these documents made accessible to the public, and the matter was heard by another judge in March this year, with judgment, at the time of Ledwaba’s interview, reserved

Maya asked Ledwaba to explain why that information had been sealed from public access. Ledwaba explained that it was normal practice — as per the court’s practice directives — for him, as deputy judge president, to “manage” such interlocutory issues, especially if they were made on an urgent basis, but would take up more than four hours of the court’s time.

He said that since the envelope, the contents of which he was not privy to, was already sealed and the president’s lawyers had requested that they remain so because of the third-party information they contained, he had directed that if any interested party wanted them unsealed, this could be done after a successful court application.

This had led to him being accused of being in the CR17 camp and that he had hidden such information from the public because it contained embarrassing information related to judges.

Noting that an application had been made to have the information accessible to the public, Ledwaba said: “So I fail to understand why there are rumours that I did not make an order that the contents of the envelope were made available to the parties because I was protecting my colleagues or I was protecting the president.”

“And that is the extent of your involvement?” Maya followed up.

“That is the extent of my involvement,” Ledwaba confirmed.

EFF leader Julius Malema, whose party has made loud denunciations of the judiciary, followed up with a question for Ledwaba to outline the “procedure” in such cases where such information can be sealed from public access without a court application, but “for you to open them, we had to go to court?”

Ledwaba confirmed that in instances like these, where certain information is requested to be removed during pre-trial, “it was not a court order that I made, it was just a directive that I made that this is how the matter would proceed… Other parties were involved, but those parties were not before me… They would also get the opportunity to put their version before the court.”

Gauteng High Court Judge President Dunstan Mlambo noted that allegations of corruption were “flying around” his division. He observed that he, himself, had been shown a “poster” on a social networking platform with his face and the words “judicial capture” emblazoned on it.

He reminded Ledwaba of a “discussion” they had had about “whether we should avoid sitting on these cases”, which were highly political in nature and which landed in that division because Pretoria was the country’s administrative capitol: “We resolved that we would be shirking our responsibility if we avoided sitting in those cases…”

Ledwaba confirmed this and that they had done so, “not to monopolise” high profile political cases as suggested by critics, because “there was also a perception that we want to be in the limelight… but [because] these are matters which need to be resolved by the leadership [of the judiciary] especially matters involving the president or senior members of political groups.”

He added that “this was not something that we started” because there was precedent for “JPs [judge presidents] to sit on matters involving presidents.”

Mlambo also commented that because of the high-profile nature of these political cases, they had established the principle of full benches to hear matters at first instance.

Justice Minister Ronald Lamola asked Ledwaba about this “conspiracy of corruption… how does it make you feel?”

The DJP responded that these were “just allegations”, some of which “contradict themselves… let these complainants file complaints”

Lamola followed up by asking what effect this failure to give evidence had on the rule of law? Ledwaba said it had a detrimental effect because some members of the public would lose faith in the judiciary despite this lack of evidence.

Advocate Thandazani Madonsela SC asked Ledwaba whether he “wanted to get out of Gauteng” with his application for an SCA appointment because of the pressures there. Ledwaba denied this, and Mlambo later noted that his deputy had confided in him that after acting stints at the SCA and the Constitutional Court, he had rekindled a love for judgment writing and wanted to pursue the shaping of jurisprudence.

Ledwaba was not appointed.