My Own Liberator: A South African Story

Abstract

Abstract Dikgang Moseneke was born in Pretoria, South Africa in December 1947. He was imprisoned on Robben Island, where most political prisoners were kept, off the coast of Cape Town for 10 years as a young man for his political activity. While in prison, he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Political Science and later completed a Bachelor of Laws degree. After his release from prison, he was admitted as an attorney in 1978 and in 1983 was called to the Pretoria Bar as a Senior Counsel. During the 1980s he worked underground for the Pan-African Congress and became its deputy president when it was unbanned in 1990. Moseneke also served on the technical committee that drafted the interim South African constitution of 1993. After a corporate career between 1995 and 2001, President Thabo Mbeki appointed him to the High Court in Pretoria and in 2002 as a judge in the Constitutional Court. In June 2005, he became the Court’s Deputy Chief Justice, a position from which he retired in May 2016. In this essay, he chronicles his years of protest, political activity, and imprisonment as a young man. The essay is an excerpt from his memoir, My Own Liberator, which is published by Picador Africa (2018), and is available online and at all good bookstores.