Capacity: Associate Professor
Appointed: N/A
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: February 1975
Qualifications: BA, BA(Hons), LLB (NWU), PGDHE, PhD (RU)
Key Judgments:
- Leppan NO and Others v King (2471/2020) [2021] ZAECGHC 67 (20 July 2021)
- Madikizela and Others v Public Protector and Others (Case No. 800/2021) ZAECBHC (26 October 2021).
- Qangule v Balfour and Another (Case No. 507/2021) ZAECELLC (5 October 2021).
- Echo Bau Proprietary Limited v The City Manager of the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality and Others (Case No. 2488/2021) ZAECPEHC (26 October 2021).
Candidate Bio:
Rhodes University law Professor Rosaan Kruger has deep roots in the Eastern Cape. Born in 1975 in the small farming town of Steynsburg, she will go on to spend the majority of her working life in the Eastern Cape, where she now seeks appointment as a judge of the Eastern Cape High Court based in Gqeberha.
After completing her BA, BA(Hons), LLB degrees with distinction from the then Potchefstroom University of Christian Higher Educatioin (now North-West University) in 1999, Kruger joined the university’s Centre for Community Law and Development as a candidate attorney. This would be her last sojourn out of the Eastern Cape, as in 2001 she returned to the province to join Done Maree Attorneys in East London as a part-time professional assistant (associate attorney).
Kruger left legal practice in 2001 to join Rhodes University as a law lecturer. She found herself drawn to constitutional law, and this prompted her to pursue her PhD in 2005, with a thesis titled ‘Racism and Law: Implementing the Right to Equality in Selected South African Equality Courts’. She is said to have used her thesis to teach her students critical concepts underpinning South Africa’s constitutional democracy. In 2006 she completed a Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education, in a move to deepen her teaching practice.
Kruger has a solid track record as a legal scholar, contributing to the discourse around equality jurisprudence through her academic writing and submissions to Parliament. She has written extensively on constitutional law, equality, and anti-discrimination law, with 25 conferences papers delivered nationally and internationally, five book chapters (two which are co-authored), and 14 journal articles. Her notable articles being ‘The Ebb and Flow of the Separation of Powers in South African Constitutional Law – Glenister Litigation Campaign’, ‘The South African Constitutional Court and the Rule of Law: The Masethla judgment, a cause of concern?’ and ‘Equality and Unfair Discrimination: Refining the Harken test’.
In 2011, Kruger was served as a part-time CCMA Commissioner. She was subsequently appointed as a Dean of the Faculty of Law in 2014 – 2020. As dean, she contributed to the institutional development plan and the LLB curriculum approved by the Council for Higher Education as part of the National Review of the LLB. This alongside her responsibilities in undergraduate teaching and postgraduate supervision.
During her academic sabbatical, she was appointed as an acting judge at the Eastern Cape Division of the High Court for a year. She penned Leppan N.O and Others v King, which raised the consequences of agreeing to have a semi-permanent caravan home in farmland with the requisite ministerial consent. The matter dealt with a trust bringing an application to the court requesting the respondent vacate the campsite and terminate the agreement between the two parties. The court, on its interjection, raised the issue of whether the Subdivision of the Agricultural Land Act rendered the agreement unlawful. The court held that the Act required written consent from the Minister for subdivision of agricultural land to prevent unwanted uneconomic fragmentation of agricultural land. The subdivision of the campsite for running a caravan park was in contravention of the Act. The court held that the agreement was concluded illegally, and the respondent was requested to vacate the premises.
If appointed, Kruger will join a crop of academics-turned-judges such as the retired Constitutional Court Justices Kate O’Regan and Yvonne Mokgoro, fellow Rhodes Law professor and now SCA Judge Clive Plasket, and more recently Nelson Mandela University Law Dean Avinash Govindjee. They have contributed immensely to South Africa’s constitutional jurisprudence both as academics and as judges.
April 2022 JSC Interview
