Judges Matter -

Enter your keyword

Judge Namhla Thina Siwendu

  • Home
  • Judge Namhla Thina Siwendu
Judge N T Y Siwendu_2479

 

Capacity: Judge
First appointed as judge:  January 2017 (Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg)
Further appointment:  October 2019 (Special Tribunal)
Acting appointments: Competition Appeal Court (Feb – Dec 2020, Jan – Dec 2022); Supreme Court of Appeal (Jun 2022 – Sep 2023)
Gender: Woman
Ethnicity: African
Date of Birth: July 1966
Qualifications: B.Soc.Sci (1987) B. Social Work (Hons)(1988)(UCT) LLB (1991)(UKZN) Cert (Global Faculty Development)(2010) (Penn.Uni, USA)

Key Judgments:

Candidate Bio | Updated August 2025

Judge Namhla Thina Siwendu is a judge of the Gauteng High Court, Johannesburg.

Siwendu holds a B.Soc.Sci (Honours) (Social Work) degree from the University of Cape Town and an LLB from the University of Natal (now UKZN). She is an accredited arbitrator with the Independent Mediation Services of SA, and holds a Global Faculty Development certificate from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

Judge Siwendu began her legal career in 1991 after graduating from UKZN with her LLB. She worked as an intern for the Centre for Applied Legal Studies before joining Cheadle Thompson & Haysom. She then practised as an attorney for 21 years.

Siwendu was one of the first black women to successfully run her own commercial law firm, Siwendu & Partners Inc., from 1996 until 2012, when it merged with Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr Inc. – one of the ‘Big 5’ law firms in South Africa. Following the merger, she became Director of the Corporate Commercial Department at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr.

During her career as an attorney, Judge Siwendu was recognised as a corporate law and governance specialist. She has sat on the boards of major blue-chip companies such as Vodacom and Anglo American, advised public companies including Eskom, and overseen many complex mergers, acquisitions, and public-private partnerships under the Public Finance Management Act. She also served as a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Corporate Governance in Africa.

In 2015, Siwendu was part of the National Forum for the Transformation of the Legal Profession, established to facilitate major reforms in the legal sector. This body was the forerunner to the statutory Legal Practice Council, which now governs both attorneys and advocates.

Siwendu was first appointed to the bench in 2017 as a judge of the Gauteng Division of the High Court. She was one of the founding members of the revitalised Johannesburg Commercial Court, which sought to reclaim from private arbitration some of the large and complex commercial law cases needed for the development of South African law. Her application to the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court therefore represents a lateral move.

In 2019, she delivered Stellenbosch University’s Annual Africa Day Lecture, titled “A Mother’s Reflection on Suicide Loss in Post-Apartheid South Africa”, where she spoke about the pain of losing her young son to suicide. This drew on her residency at Professor Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela’s South African Research Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma at Stellenbosch University. In the same year, Siwendu was appointed as one of the first judges of the Special Tribunal of the Special Investigating Unit, which was established to adjudicate cases aimed at recovering assets lost to the state through corruption and maladministration.

Her initial appellate court experience came during her tenure at the Competition Appeal Court (January–December 2022), where she authored the judgment in Competition Commission v Coca-Cola Beverages Africa. The case concerned a breach of merger conditions set out in section 12A(3) of the Competition Act, which prohibited retrenchments within five years of the merger. Despite this, 368 employees were retrenched. While the Competition Tribunal accepted Coca-Cola’s justification that the retrenchments were due to external factors such as the sugar tax and economic conditions, Siwendu on appeal found that the Tribunal had review powers under section 27(1)(c) of the Act and reversed its finding. However, her decision was later overturned by the Constitutional Court.

From June 2022 to October 2023, Siwendu served as an acting judge in the Supreme Court of Appeal, further strengthening her appellate experience.

In BF v RF, the court dealt with the interpretation of an antenuptial contract and the accrual system, specifically whether shares and other future, intangible assets could form part of the accrual calculation. Both the majority and dissenting judgments confirmed that such assets could be included. Siwendu’s dissent emphasised the importance of context and the factual background of the contracting parties’ intentions. She argued that, in the absence of a proper factual matrix, it was inappropriate for the court to resolve the matter, particularly given the broader policy implications. She recommended that the case be referred back to the court a quo.

As an attorney, Siwendu was a member of the KwaZulu-Natal Law Society (1996–2013) and the Black Lawyers Association (1998–2017). As a judge, she is a member of the International Association of Women Judges (SA Chapter, from 2017), a trainer with the African Regional Judges Forum, and has served on numerous committees in the Johannesburg High Court.

JSC Interview October 2025

The Judicial Service Commission interviewed candidates for five vacancies in the KwaZulu-Natal Division of the High Court. Following deliberations, the Commission had resolved to recommend Judge Namhla Thina Yvonne Siwendu for the position.

Judge Namhla Thina Yvonne Siwendu’s interview was successful.

SCA Interview | May 2024

In May 2024 Judge Siwendu was interviewed by the JSC for a position on the Supreme Court of Appeal. Siwendu was unsuccessful in her interview.

SCA Interview Synopsis | October 2023

Gauteng High Court Judge Thina Siwendu had a pleasant, if not totally delightful interview.

When Chief Justice Zondo asked her about the two types of discretion appellate judges may exercise, Siwendu charmingly admitted that she has been watching the previous interviews and that she expected this question. Referring to a case she had previously adjudicated, Siwendu explored the kinds of discretion, including the wider ‘true’ discretion versus narrower forms of discretion, including the limited discretion of appellate inquiring into the facts of the case.

A grumpy Petse stated that he does not understand why Siwendu listed certain cases as significant in her application bundle when “certain cases here do not seem to achieve this [significance]”. Siwendu confidently explained the significance of several of the cases she listed but conceded that there are other cases that should not actually have been added to the bundle.

Petse prefaced his last question by saying that the SCA’s style required short and concise judgments that do not delve into the facts or unrelated issues, and asked if Siwendu would be able to deliver on that mandate? “I am a work in progress,” Siwendu said,”I have delivered 8 judgments and my writing style changes and develops as I learn,” to assure the JSC that, should she be appointed, she will produce judgments of the writing style required by the court. She was not appointed.

High Court Interview Synopsis | October 2016

Asked by justice minister Michael Masutha why it was so difficult to attract and keep black women in positions within the judiciary, Siwendu suggested that “at the centre of [the reluctance] is money” as people were unwilling to give up lucrative careers or sign up to the Constitutional project and vision for South Africa.

Siwendu admitted that she sometimes struggled to write judgments, but that the delays did not accord with her personal values. She was also probed on her role at the SA Law Reform Commission and whether gender played any role in the adjudication of cases. She responded that it had and cited the Volks v Robinson matter which came before the Constitutional Court.

The matter, which dealt with the rights of the surviving spouse under the Maintenance Act, saw judges Yvonne Mokgoro and Kate O’Regan write a dissenting judgment which took a contextual approach in interpreting the Act’s provisions, while the majority judgment (by a majority male court) followed a contract law-based interpretation of the provisions.

Interview Synopsis

Asked by justice minister Michael Masutha why it was so difficult to attract and keep black women in positions within the judiciary, Siwendu suggested that “at the centre of [the reluctance] is money” as people were unwilling to give up lucrative careers or sign up to the Constitutional project and vision for South Africa.

Siwendu admitted that she sometimes struggled to write judgments, but that the delays did not accord with her personal values. She was also probed on her role at the SA Law Reform Commission and whether gender played any role in the adjudication of cases. She responded that it had and cited the Volks v Robinson matter which came before the Constitutional Court.

The matter, which dealt with the rights of the surviving spouse under the Maintenance Act, saw judges Yvonne Mokgoro and Kate O’Regan write a dissenting judgment which took a contextual approach in interpreting the Act’s provisions, while the majority judgment (by a majority male court) followed a contract law-based interpretation of the provisions.