Meet South Africa’s advocates taking the fight over Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’ to ICJ

In a landmark hearing session at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), South Africa’s well-experienced and powerful team of advocates defended the right of the Palestinian people to live on their lands as human beings and accused Israel of “genocidal intent” in Gaza.

For three hours of argument on January 11, the 14-member team presented evidence to the court of how Israel violated the Genocide Convention, showing photos and videos of horrific scenes of Gazans being bombed and their systematic forced displacement, in addition to evidence of Israeli officials calling for the annihilation of the Palestinians. So far, about 24,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel since October 7, 2023, while the number of injured people has reached more than 60,000. 

The team includes Vusimuzi Madonsela, Ambassador of the Republic of South Africa to the Kingdom of the Netherlands; South African Minister of Justice Ronald Lamola; and advocates Adila Hassim, John Dugard, Tembeka Ngcukaitobi, and Max du Plessis; in addition to Irish barrister Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh and British barrister Vaughan Lowe, Professor of Public International Law at the University of Oxford. Jusoor Post briefs its readers on South Africa’s Minister of Justice and the delegation’s six-member legal counsel’s human rights advocacy team.

Pretoria's Justice Minister Ronald Lamola

In his speech at the ICJ, Ronald Lamola said, “The violence and destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on October 7, 2023. The Palestinians have experienced systemic oppression and violence for the last 76 years, on October 6, 2023, and every day since October 7.” 

Lamola was appointed as South Africa’s Minister of Justice and Correctional Services in May 2019. He obtained two master’s degrees, one in corporate law and the second in extractive law in Africa, which focused on corporate social investment by the mining and energy sector, according to his ministry’s official website.

He was the chairman of an inter-ministerial committee by the South African government to investigate Covid-19 procurement in 2019. It was reported in local media that about R450 billion (more than $24.5 million) were stolen in Covid-19-related corruption cases.

Additionally, Lamola announced that his ministry will amend a law to protect whistleblowers exposing corruption.

Adila Hassim

Adila Hassim is one of the Johannesburg-based Thulamela Chambers’ advocates. She was the lead lawyer of the Life Esidimeni arbitration, calling for justice for 144 mentally ill people who lost their lives through torture, neglect, and starvation in psychiatric facilities in South Africa in 2016.

Hassim is of Yemeni origin. Her family was living in the Al-Masharqa area of Al-Hujariyah District in Taiz Governorate, Al Mashad newspaper reported.

She was also a clerk with Judge Pius Langa in the case of Soobramoney vs. Minister of Health (KwaZulu-Natal) 1997, in which Soobramoney filed a lawsuit against the Ministry of Health to receive emergency medical treatment.

Hassim was also an advocate, head of litigation and legal services, and acting executive director (May-October 2007) at the AIDS Law Project (ALP), a human rights organization that focuses on the implications of AIDS in South Africa. Additionally, she served on the board of directors of Corruption Watch, a non-profit organization fighting corruption in South Africa.

She co-edited The National Health Act: A Guide and Health and Democracy: A Guide to Human Rights, Health Law and Policy in Post Apartheid South Africa.

She joined the Johannesburg Society of Advocates in 2003 after obtaining a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Laws from the University of Natal.

John Dugard

A senior and experienced South African lawyer, John Dugard spoke about how South Africa voiced in the UN Security Council and in public statements its concerns about Israel committing genocide against the Palestinians.

The 88-year-old professor has been called “the father of international law.” His academic career teaching started in 1961 as a law lecturer at the University of Natal, Durban, and then as a law professor at the University of Witwatersrand, where he then became a dean of the Faculty of Law. He was also a visiting law professor in universities in the UK, Australia, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. 

Dugard was the chairman of the UN Human Rights Inquiry Commission to investigate violations of human rights and humanitarian law in the Occupied Palestinian Territories in 2001. He then became the Special Rapporteur at the UN Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council on violations of international humanitarian law and human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

In 2009, he chaired the Independent Fact-Finding Committee on Gaza following the Israeli offensive in the Strip in 2008/2009.

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi

Tembeka Ngcukaitobi focused his speech on Israel's alleged genocidal intent, saying, “The evidence of [Israel’s] genocidal intent is not only chilling, it is also overwhelming and incontrovertible.”

Ngcukaitobi joined the Johannesburg Bar in August 2021 and is a member of the Judicial Service Commission, which recommends persons for judiciary appointments. He also works for the South African Competition Tribunal.

The 47-year-old lawyer pleaded against former South African President Jacob Zuma for charges of contempt of court after he failed to appear before a corruption investigation body for accusations of mismanagement and failure to repay the government money spent on his private house in Nkandla. For the charges of contempt of court, Zuma was handed down a sentence of 15 months in prison in June 2021.

Ngcukaitobi was also the human rights lawyer who defended the families of the victims of the Marikana massacre against South African police personnel who killed 34 miners to break up their sit-in in August 2012. He was one of the team of advocates of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) in the case for the victims’ families.

Max du Plessis 

In his speech before the ICJ, Max du Plessis, a South African lawyer specializing in human rights, international, and competition law, focused on the Palestinians’ right to protection under the Genocide Convention.

“So let me be clear, South Africa’s obligation is motivated by the need to protect Palestinians in Gaza and their absolute rights not to be subjected to genocidal acts,” he said at the court.

Du Plessis started his professional career as an advocate in 2000. He worked as an associate fellow in international law at the Chatham House, the Royal Institute for International Affairs. Academically, he was an adjunct professor at both the University of Cape Town and Nelson Mandela University. He is also a co-author of several textbooks like Class Action Litigation in South Africa (2017) and Constitutional Litigation in South Africa (2015), according to the Ubunye Chambers, of which he is a member.

He had pursued cases against individuals charged with criminal acts in other African countries like Zimbabwe, Rwanda, and Madagascar, according to Doughty Street, in which he was an associate tenant.

Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh

Blinne Ní Ghrálaigh, a “fiercely intelligent” Irish barrister representing South Africa, spoke about the “urgency and potential irreparable harm” the Palestinians are facing due to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip and violations in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

“The first genocide in history where its victims are broadcasting their own destruction in real time in the desperate, so far vain hope that the world might do something,” she said, adding, “On the basis of the current figures, on average 247 Palestinians are being killed and are at risk of being killed each day, many of them literally blown to pieces. They include 48 mothers each day, two every hour, and over 117 children each day, leaving UNICEF to call Israel’s actions a war on children.”

Ní Ghrálaigh is a pioneering advocate in international human rights law. She was nominated for International Law Junior of the Year in the 2022 and Barrister of the Year in 2022 in the Legal 500 Bar Awards.

She is the executive officer of the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales (BHRC) and a member of the UK Administrative Law Bar Association.

Vaughan Lowe

The point of provisional measures was focal in Vaughan Lowe’s speech at the ICJ. “The point is not that Israel is acting disproportionately, the point is that the prohibition on genocide is an absolute, peremptory rule of law. Nothing can ever justify genocide,” he said.

The practicing barrister at Essex Court Chambers has been counsel in several cases before the ICJ, including the Antarctic whaling case (Australia vs. Japan) in which the court ordered against Japan to temporarily stop its activities of a scientific research program that covered a commercial whaling venture in the Antarctic. He was also was a member of the counsel team for Romania in the case of Maritime Delimitation in the Black Sea (Romania vs. Ukraine) in 2009, besides other maritime boundary cases.

In 2004, Lowe was an advocate for Palestine in the case of the Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory before the ICJ.