Capacity: Advocate
Further appointments: N/A
First appointed as a judge: N/A
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: White
October 2021 JSC Interview:
Interview of Adv D P De Villiers SC by the JSC, October 2021, for a position on the Gauteng Division of the High Court
Adv De Villiers’ application was unsuccessful. He was not nominated for appointment.
April 2021 JSC Interview:
April 2021 Interview Synopsis:
Advocate Daniel De Villiers SC had the kind of nervous interview that, with his “Northern Cape Afrikaner accent”, may have endeared him to a few members of the Judicial Service Commission — but perhaps not to the point where he would win enough votes to be nominated to the Gauteng High Court.
De Villiers was asked about his contribution to social cohesion by Gauteng provincial education minister Panyaza Lesufi (who is the representative of the premier at the commission), and he said while there was not much on his CV, if the JSC were to “look into my soul, you will find social cohesion”.
He said his contribution at the start of his adult life involved canvassing fellow students in his University off Stellenbosch residence to vote for the inclusion of black students in their living quarters. A campaign that raised the number for inclusion from three out of 120 up to 30.
At this point in his career, his “open door policy” to black juniors was his contribution to social cohesion, said De Villiers.
He was, weirdly, asked about his views on euthanasia and responded that he didn’t believe he would stand in the way of a hypothetical person, a university professor in their nineties who was “defined by their brain” who wanted to end it because of their loss of the kind of faculty so essential to their identity and life.
De Villiers said that during his 51 weeks acting at the Gauteng High Court he had produced about 70 judgments with only four taking longer than two months to hand down. According to De Villiers around 60% of his judgments were handed down within two weeks.
