Capacity: Advocate
Admitted as Advocate: July 2014
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Black
Date of Birth: September 1989
Qualifications: LLB (2012) (University of Limpopo), LLM (2014) (University of California, US), LLM (2025) (Georgetown University, US)
Key Appearances:
- Socialist Agenda of Dispossessed Africans v Minister of Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (CCT 279/23) [2025] ZACC 26
- Tebeile Institute NPC v Minister of Land Reform & Rural Development (LanC 97/2025) ZALCC 97
- Tjiane v Manaka and Others (A3023/2017) [2017] ZAGPJHC 216 (18 August 2017
Candidate Biography | August 2026:
Advocate Sekgame Shadrack Tebeile is an advocate at Tebeile Law Chambers.
Adv Tebeile completed his LLB in 2012 at the University of Limpopo. He continued his postgraduate studies overseas and was awarded the prestigious UCLA-Sonke Health and Human Rights Fellowship, completing his LLM at UCLA in 2014. He earned a second LLM in National and Global Health Law from Georgetown University in 2025. After earning his first degree, he got his first taste of the judiciary when he clerked at the Constitutional Court under Justices Johan Froneman and Thembile Skweyiya.
Tebeile now runs a highly dedicated public interest practice, with the majority of his litigation focused on administrative and constitutional law. He founded the Tebeila Institute and taught constitutional law part-time at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).
Tebeile has gained judicial experience through several acting appointments. He served as an Acting Judge in the Limpopo High Court in 2023, the Labour Court in 2024, the Land Court in 2025, and the Gauteng Division of the High Court in Johannesburg in 2026, where he also delivered judgments.
Tebeile is interviewing for both the Gauteng High Court and the Land Court. He brings a unique blend of general judicial suitability and land-specific relevance. For the Gauteng High Court, his academic credentials, experience as a Constitutional Court clerk and several acting judicial appointments demonstrate his strong judicial potential. In particular, Tebeile has demonstrated strong ethical character. He filed a successful misconduct complaint against Limpopo Judge President George Phatudi. The JCC found the Judge President guilty of misconduct for intimidation, demonstrating Tebeile’s courage and independence.
For the Land Court, Tebeile brings innovative experience litigating land tenure security. Through the Tebeila Institute, he challenged automatic eviction reviews under ESTA, arguing that a lack of public hearings violates constitutional rights. His institute also initiated the landmark case of Tebeila Institute v President of South Africa, establishing that public interest litigants should not be burdened with adverse costs under the Biowatch principle. His Georgetown studies in health and food security also align with the Land Court’s mandate to protect vulnerable rural communities.
Tebeile has been involved in high-impact cases. As an advocate, Tebeile appeared before the Constitutional Court in Socialist Agenda of Dispossessed Africans, a significant constitutional case concerning electoral representation, democratic participation and the allocation of seats in municipal executive committees. In Tjiane v Manaka, he represented the respondents in a significant eviction dispute concerning locus standi (legal standing) and the rights of occupants of subsidised public housing.
Despite his role as a practising advocate, Tebeile has demonstrated not only academic interests in health law, human rights, and international law, but also a commitment to constitutional and administrative law. He has nearly two decades of experience in community development and has received several awards and recognitions for his public interest legal work and commitment to social justice.
In 2019, Tebeile was admitted to the list of Counsel at the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, further reflecting his extensive experience and commitment to public interest law. Despite his broad legal and academic experience, Adv Tebeile’s track record shows that he has spent only a few weeks as an acting judge. This, along with the fact that he is still early in his career at 37, is a definite area of questioning he can expect when he is seated before the JSC.