Dhaya Pillay

Background

Pillay was born in Durban in 1958 and completed her B.Proc at University of South Africa in 1982.

Career

Pillay became heavily involved in important political cases and effectively led the firm when Mohamed was in detention. In the late 1980s, Pillay’s practice moved towards labour law, in which she later became an expert, acquiring an Master of Laws in the subject from the University of Natal in 1993. Pillay was a drafter of the Labour Relations Acting and later became a senior CCMA commissioner.

She also served as an advisor to the drafters of the South African Constitution.

Pillay was made a judge of the Labour Court in 2000 and of the KwaZulu-Natal High Court in 2010. She was nominated by rights groups and former Constitutional Court judge Zak Yacoob and was praised by commentators.

Achievements

• Pillay is an extraordinary professor at the University of Pretoria and has been a visiting academic at the University of Seattle, New York University, the University of Oxford and the Open University. She was recognised as a human rights defender by the Durban branch of Amnesty International in 2005.

Politics

She supported Judge President Chiman Patel – now ousted amid suspicions that he fell out with the KwaZulu-Natal political establishment – in the racial spat over his appointment. In July 2015 she was interviewed and shortlisted by the Judicial Service Commission for appointment to the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Membership

Early in her career as an attorney, she joined the firm of noted activist lawyer Yunus Mohamed, a founding member of the Union for French Democracy and the instructing attorney in the Delmas Treason Trial.