ONE of Namibia’s best-known and most highly rated lawyers, Dave Smuts, will be starting a new phase in his career as a judge of the High Court in February.
Smuts’s appointment as a permanent judge of the High Court with effect from February 1 was announced from the office of the Chief Justice on Friday. Other judicial appointments announced include those of former South African Chief Justice Pius Langa and former South African Constitutional Court Judge Kate O’Regan as acting judges of appeal of Namibia’s Supreme Court.Judges Langa and O’Regan have been acting judges of appeal of the Supreme Court since the start of February this year, and have been appointed to a further term in the same position from the start of February 2011 to the end of January 2012.The appointment of four acting judges of the High Court was also announced.A retired judge of the High Court of Botswana, John Mosojane, will be acting as a judge of Namibia’s High Court from April 26 to May 13 next year. Judge Mosojane is a past chairman of Botswana’s Independent Electoral Commission. He retired as a judge of the Botswana High Court at Francistown in 2008.The other three acting judge appointments are those of Harald Geier, who is a member of the Society of Advocates of Namibia, Ondangwa-based Regional Court Magistrate A.K. Simpson and the Chief: Lower Courts in the Ministry of Justice, Petrus Unengu. They will be serving as acting judges of the High Court in the period from January 17 to April 15.Geier, Unengu and Simpson have all been acting judges previously as well.Smuts has served as an acting judge of the High Court on several occasions in the past – in 1996, 1998 and most recently in 2006.He has been practising law since 1980 – first as an attorney with the firm Lorentz & Bone and then as an advocate since 1988, and attained senior counsel status in April 2004.Smuts studied law at Stellenbosch University and later also at Harvard University, where he obtained a master’s degree in law. He has also been a fellow and guest lecturer at Yale University in the United States of America.He gained a reputation as a human rights lawyer with his involvement in several political cases in Namibia’s courts during the 1980s. He was the founding Director of the Legal Assistance Centre in 1988, and stepped down from that position in 1992, when he went into private practice as an advocate. Smuts has been serving as chairman of the LAC’s board of trustees after resigning as director of the public interest law firm.Smuts is also the current chairman of the board of directors of Standard Bank Namibia. He has announced that the is stepping down as LAC chairperson, and will also be stepping down as Standard Bank board chairman at the end of January.
