THE YUMMiE AWARD FOR ACHIEVEMENT Navanethem was six years old when her unschooled mother asked her to take R5 to her father, who was at work. It was 1947, and Navi’s father was a bus driver, earning less than R5 per month. On her way to her father, a bus conductor snatched the money from her. He was later arrested, Navi testified in court and he was found guilty and sentenced to three months in prison. But, the family did not get the R5 back.

Enforced by the Group Areas Act, the Pillay family lived in a poor, segregated all-Indian suburb of Durban.
This very community supported Navi with donations towards her studies, and in 1963 she graduated with a BA from the then University of Natal and a LLB in 1965.
She went on to study law at Harvard, obtaining a Master of Law in 1982 and a Doctor of Juridicial Science degree in 1988.

In 1967, Navanethem became the first woman to open her own law practice in Natal, and in 1995 she became the first non-white judge of South Africa’s High Court. In 1995 Pillay joined the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda — established by the UN Security Council to try those held responsible for the 1994 Rwandan genocide — and was elected judge president of the court in 1999. .

 

She also served as International Criminal Court judge in The Hague, Netherlands, from 2003 to 2008.

In September 2008, she was appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and she is listed at 64 in Forbes Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women in The World.

Navanethem Pillay deserves The Yummie Award for determination, resolve and achievement.

Kader Khan
Editor
info@yummie.co.za