Facts about Judge Thokozile Masipa, presiding judge in Pistorius trial
Judge Thokozile Masipa. South African athlete Oscar Pistorius should be given “sufficient punishment” for killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, her cousin has told the sentencing hearing in Pretoria. PHOTO | AFP
- Judge Thokozile Masipa was born in Soweto in 1947 as Matilda and later changed her name to Thokozile, Zulu for happy.
- Her nickname while growing up was Tilly.
- Judge Masipa used to be put on lookout for police while growing up at her home, as her grandparents brewed home-made beer.
- She started out as a social worker after receiving a bachelor of arts degree from the University of South Africa.
- She took additional jobs as a clerk, messenger and tea girl in order to pay for her education.
- After graduating, she was hired as a crime reporter for the newspaper The World, where she reported on the increasingly violent struggle against apartheid, including the murder of activist Steve Biko in 1977.
- She moved to become a women’s editor of The Post newspaper, where she wrote about schools, education and labour conditions for domestic workers, often to the anger of the authorities.
- She marched in support of press freedom and as a result was put in police custody for a day during which she defied orders to clean cell latrines.
- She married Makhutla Wilson Masipa, a tax consultant, and together they sired two children.
- The money from her journalism job funded her studies for a law degree at the University of South Africa, and in 1990 she graduated and was appointed as an advocate.
- She was named a judge in the Transvaal Provincial Division in 1998, becoming the second black woman on the bench after former Constitutional Court Judge Yvonne Mokgoro.
- She has earned a reputation for being tough, intelligent and unafraid of controversy.
- In 2009, she handed Freddy Mashamba, a police inspector, a life sentence in prison for murdering his wife.
- In 2013, she sentenced a serial rapist to 252 years in prison, saying: “The worst in my view is that he attacked and raped the victims in their own homes, where they thought they were safe.”
