Education
University of Cambridge.
politician Chief Justice of South Africa
University of Cambridge.
Born on September 11, 1873, de Wet obtained a law degree from the University of Cambridge in 1895 and was admitted as an advocate (the South African equivalent of a barrister) in 1896. During the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902), he was military secretary to General Louis Botha, commandant-general of the Transvaal forces, and acted as an interpreter at the peace conference that ended the war in 1902. He was a legal adviser to the Transvaal delegation to the 1908-1909 National Convention that drew up the Constitution for the Union of South Africa.
In 1913, he was appointed a King"s Counsel.
As such, he had to deal with the legal aspects of an armed Afrikaner uprising against the government in 1914, and the 1922 Rand Revolt. De Wet was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court in 1932, a judge of the Appeal Court in 1937, and Chief Justice in 1939.
As Chief Justice, he was required ex officio to act as Officer Administering the Government, in the absence of the Governor-General, which he did for two and a half years, from the death of Sir Patrick Duncan in 1943 and the appointment of Gideon Brand van Zyl in 1945. De Wet was married twice.
He died in 1960.
After the war, de Wet joined Botha in politics, and was a member of the Transvaal legislative assembly from 1907 to 1910. He served in the South African Party government as Minister of Justice from 1913 to 1924.
De Wet was a member of the Union Parliament between 1913 and 1929, serving as a member of the House of Assembly from 1913 to 1920 and a Senator from 1920 to 1929. He was appointed a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom in 1939.