Tembeka Ngcukaitobi

Tembeka Nicholas Ngcukaitobi (born 25 December 1976) is a South African lawyer and legal scholar.

Ngcukaitobi was born on 25 December 1976 in Cala in the former Transkei, now part of the Eastern Cape; he grew up in the nearby village of Lupapasi.

His mother, Nomsa, was a domestic worker, a teacher at a school for the disabled, and then a nurse, and his father, Gcinabantu Hutchinson, was a mineworker in Johannesburg and then a clerk at the Magistrate's Court in Cofimvaba.

His brother, Lulama Ngcukaitobi, later became a prominent politician in the governing African National Congress.

Their father died in an accident in 1983 while studying law at the University of South Africa, and Ngcukaitobi became interested in law as a means of doing "what my father couldn't do".

He attended Mantanzima High School in Cala, and then, unable to afford the University of Natal, studied law on a bursary at the University of Transkei.

He was president of the university's student representative council in 1997 and graduated with a BProc and an LLB in 1999.

He later completed two LLMs, one at Rhodes University and another at the London School of Economics.

Ngcukaitobi began his legal career at the Legal Aid Clinic in Mthatha and then at the Legal Resources Centre in Grahamstown.

He received offers to clerk on the Constitutional Court of South Africa for three different justices, Arthur Chaskalson, Sandile Ngcobo and Kate O'Regan; he chose to clerk for Chaskalson.

After that, he worked at Bowman Gilfillan between 2001 and 2010.

An advocate of the Johannesburg Bar since August 2010, he gained silk status in February 2020.

He is currently a member of the Judicial Service Commission and a part-time member of the Competition Commission's Competition Tribunal.

Born in the former Transkei, Ngcukaitobi clerked for Justice Arthur Chaskalson on the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

He spent several years as an attorney for Bowman Gilfillan before joining the bar and the constitutional litigation unit of the Legal Resources Centre.

He has since argued in front of the Constitutional Court on behalf of clients including the Economic Freedom Fighters, the Zondo Commission, and President Cyril Ramaphosa.

In addition to his expertise in constitutional and public law, he has experience in competition law, labour law, and land law.

In August 2010, Ngcukaitobi was admitted to the Johannesburg Bar as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa.

He spent three years as director of the constitutional litigation unit at the Legal Resources Centre, during which time he worked with George Bizos as counsel for the families of the victims of the Marikana massacre.

Over the next decade, he appeared in front of the Constitutional Court and frequently in front of the Competition Appeal Court, the High Court, and the Supreme Court of Appeal.

Early in his career, he frequently served as junior counsel under Dali Mpofu, including in Gareth Cliff's campaign to be reinstated as a judge on Idols in 2015 and in the MDC Alliance's campaign to overturn the results of the 2018 Zimbabwean election; the Sunday Times nicknamed him "the Robin to Dali Mpofu's Batman".

Ngcukaitobi rose to public prominence during the presidency of Jacob Zuma, when he represented the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in a series of politically controversial cases, including a 2016 Pretoria High Court bid to gain access to Thuli Madonsela's report on alleged state capture.

In the latter capacity, in 2016, he handed down judgement in Msiza v Director-General of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, ruling in favour of a labour tenant represented by the Legal Resources Centre.

In 2017, in EFF v Speaker, he fronted the EFF's successful bid to have the Constitutional Court order the Speaker of the National Assembly to implement another of Madonsela's reports, this one about the Nkandla scandal.

Also in 2017, Ngcukaitobi represented the EFF in UDM v Speaker of the National Assembly.

He has written two books about land dispossession and land reform, The Land Is Ours (2018) and Land Matters (2021), and he has acted as a judge in the Labour Court, the Land Claims Court, and the High Court of South Africa.

In May 2019, less than a decade into his career as an advocate (an unusually short period), Ngcukaitobi announced that he had been recommended for silk status, which he duly received at the end of February 2020.

He is currently attached to the Duma Nokwe Group at the Johannesburg Bar.

In October 2019, the Department of Justice further announced that it would retain the assistance of Ngcukaitobi and three other senior advocates – Wim Trengove, Ngwako Maenetje, and Geoff Budlender – in guiding state capture-related investigations and prosecutions.

R5 million was made available for the legal fees of each advocate.

A year later, former President Zuma accused Ngcukaitobi of "irregular" collusion with Deputy Chief Justice Raymond Zondo, who was leading the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture.

In subsequent months, Ngcukaitobi served as counsel for the Zondo Commission, in which capacity he argued before the Constitutional Court that Zuma's failure to appear before the commission amounted to contempt of court.

Zuma was represented by Ngcukaitobi's former mentor, Dali Mpofu.

After the Constitutional Court handed Zuma a prison sentence, Ngcukaitobi also represented the Zondo Commission in challenging Zuma's further attempts to avoid serving his sentence.

Tony Leon, writing in the Business Day, commended his "splendid laceration of Zuma" during this period.

In 2020, Ngcukaitobi, under Wim Trengove, served as counsel to President Cyril Ramaphosa in his successful attempt to overturn Busisiwe Mkhwebane's report about alleged misconduct by Ramaphosa's CR17 campaign.

The case went to the Constitutional Court on appeal.

In 2023, Ngcukaitobi represented 19 parties, led by the UDM, in an application which sought to have the Pretoria High Court declare loadshedding to be unconstitutional.

In 2023-24, he was appointed as a member of the South African legal team arguing South Africa v. Israel regarding the Genocide Convention.

Ngcukaitobi has served as an acting judge in the Labour Court and in the Land Claims Court.