Former SA Judge President Gerald Friedman bows out

Former Judge President Gerald Friedman has died in Cape Town at the age of 94. He enrolled at the University of Cape Town at the age of 16 in 1945 and by 21 he had his BA and LLB. He joined the Cape Bar in 1950. He took Silk in 1970, was elected leader of the Cape Bar, serving on the General Council of the Bar. As a Bar leader, Friedman authored critical public dissections of the welter of repressive measures in the 1970s. He represented the notorious scissors-murderer, Marlene Lehnberg, who was sentenced to death. Friedman’s success in persuading the trial judge after sentence to admit new evidence undoubtedly helped save her life on appeal. In a Daily Maverick obituary, Jeremy Gauntlett SC notes that Friedman was appointed a judge at the time of a welter of bans on media and organisations in 1977, and just a month before the death of Steve Biko. For eight years Friedman led the Cape. ‘Colleagues and practitioners alike knew they had a great Judge President. His leadership skills were evident. Few judges are both very good lawyers and administrators. He marvelled in later years to read about judges not delivering judgments. His comment was that that was the Judge President’s fault,’ Gauntlett notes.

He was responsible for recruiting the first Cape female senior advocate (Jeanette Traverso) as a judge, the first academic lawyer (Dennis Davis) and the first Cape judges of colour. For 11 years, until he was 82, he served as the chair of the Financial Services Appeal Board. For eight of those years he was also the chair of the Ombudsman’s Council, and from time to time he arbitrated weighty matters. He also served as a Judge of Appeal of the Kingdom of Lesotho.