Cape Town - From shoe salesman to the bench of one of the most prominent high courts in South Africa.
While Western Cape High Court Judge Siraj Desai thought he was destined for success, as he retires at the age of 69, he can proudly look back at an illustrious career spanning 43 years and making an immense contribution to the South African legal profession.
Judge Desai is well known for the cases that made the papers, putting people like triple murderer Henri Van Breda behind bars for three life terms and winning victories for the poor. But before he took a seat on the bench, he earned his stripes as an activist lawyer representing people accused apartheid crimes who often could not afford his services.
Judge Desai sat down with the Weekend Argus at his favourite lunch spot and reflected on his life from the very start of his career to what led him to where he is today.
Born in the shadows of Table Mountain in Durham Avenue just opposite the morgue, Judge Desai said although he came from Cape Town and was schooled very politically at Trafalgar High School, he found himself on the left of the political spectrum when he went to Durban.
“I started off in 1976, and I was articled with Dullah Omar, and did all the political work in the Cape. I worked as a lawyer, but even before that, I was politically active as a student at Durban Westville University,” he said.
“People like Steve Biko, Rick Turner, Saths Cooper, Pravin Gordhan are all my contemporaries, so I lived in an exciting period of political reawakening in this country. There we had great fun debating issues, participating in the process and protests that took place there.
Then I came back, and I found myself amid the 1976 uprising this time, not on the barricade, this time on the other side of the barricade defending the people and that turned out to be my role until 1994. I started off defending people who threw stones. I defended so-called terrorists. I defended all sorts of people who committed political offences,” reminisced Judge Desai.
What people may not know though is before all the political excitement, are the humble career beginnings that saw him work for a family member selling shoes.
“My other vocation is that of a shoe salesman. When I was a student in Durban, I worked as a salesman at a shoe shop. It was my cousin's shoe shop. I could sell shoes in English and in Zulu, but it's basically asking what colour shoes you want and what size you want. They sold all types of shoes. Men’s and ladies shoes, upmarket shoes, but they use to sell slippers and sandals and that sort of thing. This was in the heart of Durban’s Grey Street. I was about 18,” said Desai.
For Judge Desai, the importance of his job was often underestimated, he said, reflecting on the big rulings he delivered.
“I don’t think then that we understood the importance of my job. I did some of the major criminal trials in the Cape over the last 10 or 20 years, and none of my criminal convictions has ever been reversed by the high courts, but they were challenging matters to hear. As I said on many occasions, the most difficult was Najwa because she and the deceased come from the exact same community I come from,” said Judge Desai.
“Then, of course, there is the Valencia Farmer case that was very difficult because of such savage brutality. I was sentencing very young offenders, and I don’t give life sentences easily. The same really applied in the cases of Henri van Breda; he was also a young man.”
Reflecting on the value of family, Judge Desai could not contain his smile as the feeling of happiness at the thought of his son coming from London for his 70th birthday on January 10.
His two sons and daughter, now in their 30s, are the cornerstone of his life.
“They were very small when I became a judge. They, in fact, have only known me as a judge. They are not spoilt. They didn't take advantage of the fact that their father was a judge. They went on to achieve. They are the pride of my life.”
His wife, Faieza Omar Desai, died at the age of 58 in 2018.
“The day I became a judge, my wife organised everything. My late father came, my sisters and cousins, they all came to our house,” he said.
Desai added that he still questioned the speed of transformation in the South African legal profession, holding reservations, especially around the role of the Cape Bar.
“The people I have some reservations about are the Cape Bar. They never supported transformation. They never really supported anybody of colour to the bench for 20 years, and because of that, they lost their historical moment to participate in the change. They didn’t realise that they lost the moment in history where they could have played an effective role. That is why the Cape Bar is the most conservative in the country presently. They lost their opportunity to play their role in transformation,” he said.
In closing, he shared his view on areas of improvement in the country’s criminal justice system.
“An individual, although how well he may be trained, cannot disabuse his mind of his own prejudices. The second problem is that judges too easily impose life sentences. Politicians pander to public opinion, and judges should not. They don't have to be popular, they have to be just, and that is not always the same as popular.
“Third is that, sometime in the future, a Minister of justice will abolish minimum sentences. Our sentences are far too harsh, and we are over crowding the prisons to an extent that they become unmanageable.”
Although Desai has retired as a judge, he says he has something exciting brewing.
Weekend Argus