President Cyril Ramaphosa has honoured the late wrestle veteran and human rights lawyer Advocate Dumalisile Philemon Pearce Nokwe with the posthumous conferral of the honorary title of Senior Counsel (Silk) for the Republic of South Africa.
The President has bestowed this conferral on the late Adv Nokwe on the eve of the esteemed authorized practitioner’s reburial in West Park Cemetery, Johannesburg, tomorrow, Saturday, 17 Might 2025.
He will likely be reburied alongside along with his spouse, Mrs Vuyiswa Malangabi-Nokwe who handed away in 2008.
She was a distinguished activist in her personal proper and had obtained a BSc and Bachelor of Training diploma.
Advocate “Duma” Nokwe handed away in Zambia in 1978, on the age of fifty. He had lived in exile since 1963. His mortal stays have been repatriated to South Africa in 2024.
President Ramaphosa has accorded Adv Nokwe a Particular Provincial Official Funeral and the President will ship a tribute at tomorrow’s ceremony.
The posthumous honour bestowed on the primary African advocate of the Supreme Courtroom is a excessive honour that recognises Adv Nokwe’s experience and contribution to the authorized career.
President Ramaphosa has conferred the standing of Senior Counsel on Adv Nokwe consistent with the provisions of the Authorized Apply Act of 2014, which governs this standing and units out the standards for its conferral.
On this occasion, the Authorized Apply Council and the Duma Nokwe Group of Advocates made an software to the President for the Adv Nokwe’s posthumous appointment as a Senior Counsel.
Adv Nokwe, who was born in 1927, obtained a BSc diploma from the College of Fort Hare and a diploma in training with which he took up a instructing put up in Krugersdorp.
His political activism led to imprisonment in the course of the 1952 Defiance Marketing campaign and his dismissal by the then Transvaal Training Division.
Following his participation within the 1953 World Youth Competition and visits to the then Soviet Union, China and Britain, the South African authorities imposed a banning and restriction order on him.
He subsequently studied legislation, obtained an LLB diploma and have become the primary black advocate to be admitted to the Johannesburg Society of Advocates.
The Native Affairs Division of the time debarred him from taking chambers along with his white colleagues within the Johannesburg metropolis centre and this improvement led to Adv Nokwe devoting himself to the liberation wrestle.
He was placed on trial for treason and was subjected to banning orders, arrests and assault by the police.
He was elected Secretary-Common of the African Nationwide Congress in 1958 and mobilised communities towards apartheid till the underground management directed him to go away South Africa in January 1963.
Adv Nokwe campaigned towards the apartheid state on international platforms together with these of the Organisation of African Unity and African Union, and remained an activist till he handed in Lusaka in January 1978.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of The Presidency of the Republic of South Africa.
