Meet the only four Chief Justices in Africa who are women

Maseforo Mahase

She is the acting Chief Justice of Lesotho, having been appointed in September 2018 after Chief Justice Nthomeng Majara was suspended from office over a list of misconduct charges, including her alleged failure to ensure the timeous delivery of justice, the Lesotho Times reported. Mahase, a High Court judge and now acting as Chief Justice, was recently given a standing ovation after she presented a report to the Africa Region of the International Association of Judges meeting in Cape Town in early June 2019, on the challenges experienced by her colleagues in that country.

“Inadequate salaries and inadequate resourcing of the entire judiciary topped the list of problems, along with the ambiguous position of magistrates who were sometimes treated as members of an independent judiciary and sometimes as civil servants, depending on which suited government at the time,” africanlii.org reported.