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Judge E F (Fiona) Dippenaar SC

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Judge EF Dippenaar_4415

Capacity: Judge
First appointed as judge: 2019 (Gauteng)
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: White
Date of Birth: September 1965
Qualifications: B. Comm Law (1986), LLB (1988), LLM (1992) (Rand Afrikaans University – now UJ)

Key Judgments:

Candidate Bio | Updated February 2026:

Judge Evette Fiona Dippenaar is Judge of the Gauteng Division of the High Court, Johannesburg.

Judge Dippenaar joined the Johannesburg Bar in 1992 after completing her legal education at Rand Afrikaans University, now the University of Johannesburg. Following Bar admission, she practiced as an advocate for 26 years (1992-2018) and was awarded senior advocate status from 2009.

While managing her career as an advocate, Dippenaar has sat on the judiciary as an acting judge and in a permanent capacity since 2010. Her first acting judge stint occurred in 2010 for the Gauteng High Court; Dippenaar continued on the Gauteng bench in an acting capacity between 2011 and 2018. In January 2019, her acting position became permanent when she was appointed a judge of the Gauteng High Court. She has held this position for 7 years while also completing one term as an acting judge of appeal for the Supreme Court of Appeal and five consecutive terms at the Competition Appeal Court since the start of 2025. She will continue to act at the Competition Appeal Court until the end of 2026, garnering plenty of experience in this court.

In her 2018 interview for Gauteng High Court judge, Dippenaar’s judgment writing was said to require “a level of sharpening for clarity.” In the subsequent years, Dippenaar’s writing has improved as she has written several judgments.

The legal issue on appeal in Mashwayi raised novel issues regarding the voting rights of creditors to vote on a nosiness rescue plan in business rescue proceedings. The judgment analysed Chapter 6 of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 . The judgment affirmed that post-commencement creditors have voting rights in business rescue proceedings.  The judgment has created debate regarding the willingness of post-commencement creditors to provide funding for failing companies under supervision.

In TT and Another, the Department of Social Development was involved in the adoption of two minors from unmarried adult mothers and their right to make choices relating to the adoption of their minor children. Dippenaar implied that the Department acted with blinders on when they contended that it was not in the best interests of their minor children that they be adopted by their prospective adoptive parents and instead stay with biological relatives, and focused only on their bias towards mothers who select adoption and their “blanket priority” to place children with extended biological family members despite the biological mother’s request for confidentiality. Dippenaar’s judgment is vital because it affirms the constitutional rights of unmarried women to autonomy, privacy, and dignity and those of minor children under s 28.

While Dippenaar has spent years on the bench, her ambitions outside of the courtroom are reinforced by a desire to promote transformation and gender equality in the commercial practice and fields, especially in insolvency. After creating her commercial practice, Dippenaar focused on legal areas that generally lacked female counsel presence and incorporated female and black juniors into her practice wherever possible. Dippenaar has also helped establish an Insolvency Motion Court in Johannesburg. Dippenaar hopes this project assists the court in effectively resolving insolvency issues and creates additional capacity on other motion rolls.

Dippenaar now waits to find out if she can convince the JSC to turn her two-year acting stint into a permanent position.

April 2026 Interview

After deliberations, the Judicial Service Commission has resolved not to recommend any candidate to be appointed to the Competition Appeal Court and leave the vacancy open.

October 2018 Interview

October 2018 Interview Synopsis

Her vast experience in commercial law and liquidation matters appeared to stand Advocate Fiona Dippenaar SC in good stead during her interview for a position on the Gauteng Division of the High Court, where, as Judge President Dunstan Mlambo pointed out, there were “a lot” of these types of cases.

Dippenaar was eventually appointed; however, she had to explain the nature of the three complaints which had been lodged against her during her time at the Bar early on in the interview.

All three had been dismissed by the General Council of the Bar, but they did point to the often acrimonious nature of litigation in South Africa, including, as Dippenaar revealed in one instance, her instructing attorney getting into a “physical altercation outside court” with his opponent.

Dippenaar was asked by Advocate Dali Mpofu SC, representing the advocates’ profession on the Judicial Service Commission (JSC), what she had done during her career to aid transformation, and how her appointment would contribute to a vision of a demographically representative judiciary.

She said her appointment would address “diversity and gender representation” on the Bench. Dippenaar added that since she was “able to”, she had briefed female juniors, including agreeing to “fee sacrifices to accommodate women” and sometimes paid female juniors “out of my own pocket” to ensure they worked on matters with her. She said she had focused on black female juniors, especially.

During her 37-minute interview, Dippenaar was asked to explain her approach to a defamation case she had heard in the Equality Court between a well-known businesswoman and a former government spin-doctor/ businessman thought to be close to former president Jacob Zuma.

She said when considering cases of this nature, judges had to tread a fine line between the right to dignity and the right to freedom of expression in South Africa, which was not untrammelled.