INSPECTING JUDGE
DEON HURTER VAN ZYL
DEON HURTER VAN ZYL was born in Springs on 22 August 1943. He matriculated in 1961 at the Springs Boys' High School. At the University of Pretoria he was awarded the LLB degree in 1966 and the MA in Latin in 1968. Thereafter he received four doctorates, namely the Dr Jur (Leyden 1970), PhD and LLD (Cape Town 1983 and 1988 respectively) and D Litt (Latin) (Free State 1989). He also studied, from September 1968 to September 1969, at the Universities of Paris and Hamburg.
From 1971 to 1973 he was professor in and head of the Department of Roman Law and Legal History at the University of the Free State. From 1974 to 1979 he was part-time professor in and head of the Department of Roman Law and Legal History at the University of Pretoria. He is presently an honorary professor of law at the North West University and an extraordinary professor of law at the Universities of Stellenbosch and the Free State. He also served, for a number of years, as a visiting professor at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.
He practised as an advocate for eleven years, first at the Free State Bar (1973) and then (1974 to 1984) at the Pretoria Bar, where he was appointed a Senior Counsel (SC) in 1983. Thereafter he was a Judge of the High Court of South Africa for more than twenty-three years, doing duty in Pretoria (1985-1993) and Cape Town (1994-2008). He has recently been appointed, as from 1 May 2008, to the office of Acting Inspecting Judge in the Judicial Inspectorate of the Department of Correctional Services.
He is the author of nine books, including text-books on Roman law, legal
history and comparative law, and of more than 100 contributions to legal and
other journals. He is also the co-editor, with Justice Bola Ajibola of Nigeria,
of The Judiciary in Africa (Juta 1998). More than 140 of his judgments have been
reported in South African law reports.
He has wide-ranging international interests. He is President for Africa of the World Jurist Association (Washington DC) and an Associate Member of the International Academy of Comparative Law (Paris), the Society of Legal Scholars (London) and the Stair Society (Edinburgh). He is also a networker of the Commonwealth Partnership for Technology Management (CPTM) (London).
He is an enthusiastic supporter of all manner of sport, particularly
athletics. He was the last President of the South African Amateur Athletics
Union (1991-1992) and the first President of Athletics South Africa (1992-1993).
In February 1999 he was appointed as a member of the Court of Arbitration for
Sport (Lausanne) and served on its ad hoc arbitration panels doing duty at the
Commonwealth Games (Manchester 2002), the Olympic Games (Athens 2004) and the
Commonwealth Games (Melbourne 2006). He also chairs the Legal and Arbitration
Commission of the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (SASCOC).
In the community sphere he has been a member of the Rotary Club of Gordon's Bay since its charter in July 1998 and was President of the Club in 2000-2001. He was recently awarded the Rotary International "Four Avenues of Service Citation for Individual Rotarians" and the Paul Harris Award for services rendered to the community. In 1992 he received the Laureatus Award of the University of Pretoria Alumni Society in recognition of his exceptional achievements, and in 1997 the World Jurist Award was conferred on him in recognition of his contributions to world order under the rule of law.
In the educational sphere he has, for many years, been involved in literacy from pre-primary to tertiary level. He currently chairs the governing bodies of the Gordon’s Bay Primary School and the Parel Vallei High School in Somerset West.
He is married to Elsa van Rensburg, a former schoolteacher. They have two daughters, namely Esther, born in 1994, and Christine-Marié, born in 1998. The family is happily ensconced in the picturesque village of Gordon's Bay.