Capacity: Attorney
Admission as an Attorney: September 2000
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Coloured
Date of Birth: October 1967
Qualifications: BA (1989) LLB (1998) LLM (2011) (University of the Witwatersrand)
Key Judgments:
- Nkgoeng and Others v Regional Land Claims Commissioner Limpopo Province and Others (2025) ZALCC 46
- Khiba and Others v Van Niekerk and Others(2025) ZALCC 18
- Dreyer N.O and Others v Witbooi and Others (2024) ZALCC 45
Candidate Biography | August 2026:
Diana Mabasa is a legal practitioner who has practised as an attorney for over 20 years and recently served as an Acting Judge of the Land Court.
Prior to her admission as a legal practitioner in 2000, Mabasa completed her BA at the University of the Witwatersrand. She then worked as an insurance claims official. This early career in the insurance industry inspired her to study law. She returned to Wits University to complete her LLB in 1998. She then completed her articles as a law clerk at Routledge-Modise Attorneys.
Mabasa’s career has included several new beginnings. After her admission as an attorney in 2000, Mabasa worked for South African Claims Manager Ltd. (2000-2001). She also worked at De Vries Inc. (2002-2003) and was promoted to Director before joining TP Mabasa Inc. in 2004.
As a qualified notary and conveyancer, Mabasa completed her LLM at Wits in 2011 and established her own legal practice in 2015. Mabasa’s career and academic interests align closely with her commitment to constitutional principles and access to justice, and her thesis focused on the environmental rights of impoverished communities affected by mining activities. She authored the LexisNexis award-winning article, “Ukuthwala: is it culturally relative?” (2015), and Women Judges: Are they doing justice to the cause? (2016). The former argues for an overhaul in the manner in which lawyers and policymakers view ukuthwala, to be considered detrimental to black women and girls through the intersection of age, race, gender and cultural discrimination, instead of customary tradition. The latter explores the influence of gender diversity in the judiciary and advocates implementing feminist analytical tools in judicial critiques.
Mabasa’s next pivot took her from a lawyer to an acting judge in 2014, and she has now sat on the Gauteng High Court bench twice. Ten years after her first sitting at the High Court, Mabasa was appointed as an acting judge of the Land Court of South Africa in 2024. As an acting judge of the Land Court, Mabasa has presided over matters involving ownership, housing, historical injustice and land reform legislation.
Mabasa has written multiple judgments as an acting judge at the Land Court. In Nkgoeng, Mabasa referred to the historic implications of apartheid’s “Betterment Schemes” as “a tool for entrenching the apartheid system of racial segregation and economic exploitation”, whose effects contributed to increased “landlessness, poverty, and dependence on the migrant labour system”. She ruled that a single individual can lodge land restitution claims on behalf of an entire communal group.
In Khiba, the question before Mabasa was whether the Prevention of Illegal Eviction from Lawful Occupation of Land Act (PIE Act) was used to evade the protections of the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (ESTA) when a farm dweller and her family were evicted, their home demolished, and their belongings removed and lost. Mabasa found the eviction unlawful, reasoning that the manner of eviction and purposeful circumvention of ESTA infringed on the applicant’s rights to “human dignity, adequate housing, and security of tenure”.
Mabasa’s professional career is broad and enriched by her various work and academic experiences. She has further demonstrated leadership through her involvement in professional and civic organisations, where she has taken on leadership roles.
With significant acting judicial experience and involvement in the functions of the court, it will be interesting to see if Mabasa’s next big pivot can be to a full-time judge of the Land Court of South Africa. After difficult questions from Adv Ngcukaitobi SC in her April interview, Mabasa will need to demonstrate that she has the appropriate land law acumen to secure the position and satisfy the commissioners with her answers.
April 2026 Interview:
After deliberations, the Judicial Service Commission has resolved not to recommend any candidate to be appointed to the Land Court and to leave the vacancy open.