‘We are very proud’: Durban celebrates Navi Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize

Clairwood is celebrating one of its proudest moments after Navi Pillay, the legal trailblazer who grew up in the Durban suburb, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced in Oslo that Pillay, 85, had been honoured for her work promoting peace and international law, particularly her role in ensuring that war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide were prosecuted.

Pillay is the first SA woman to receive the prestigious accolade, and the fifth South African after Albert Luthuli in 1960, Desmond Tutu in 1984, and Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk, who shared it in 1993.

Pillay has often spoken about how the people of Clairwood backed her dream of becoming a lawyer.

“I got to university because my community, a poor community of Clairwood, was told by the school principal, ‘we have a girl with potential and she should go to university’,” Pillay said in a previous interview.

The community raised the money for her studies, though a teacher had once told her she would need a wealthy father if she wanted to become a lawyer.

Rishi Singh, of the Clairwood Ratepayers and Residents’ Association, said Pillay’s Nobel Peace Prize belonged to the whole country, but that it meant the most to Clairwood because it was where she was born and raised.

“We are very proud,” Singh told IOL.

“She’s a product of Clairwood, she was born and brought up in Clairwood.

“It’s not only for Clairwood, but for SA itself.”

Singh said he first got to know Pillay when she was an attorney in Durban and patron of the Clairwood Ex-Students Society, the former pupils’ body of Clairwood High School, where he served as treasurer.

“She always believed in equality and in justice,” he said of Pillay, who was inundated with calls from well-wishers and the media on Friday and could not immediately be reached for comment by IOL.

“She always advocated gender equality. I think it’s well deserved.”

Pillay was born in Clairwood on September 23 1941, the fifth of eight children in a family of Indian Tamil origin.

Her grandfather lost both arms in an accident at a sugarcane mill, she told Wits University when it awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2022.

Pillay, the daughter of a bus driver, graduated from the then University of Natal with a BA in 1963 and a law degree in 1965, but struggled to find a law firm willing to employ her because she was a black woman under apartheid.

She served her articles under Narainsamy Thumbi Naicker, a banned ANC member who was under house arrest at the time.

In 1967, she became the first woman to open her own law practice in what was then Natal.

From that practice she defended political activists detained by the apartheid government, among them members of the Unity Movement charged under the Terrorism Act in 1971 and, in the mid-1970s, Black Consciousness Movement leaders Saths Cooper and Strini Moodley.

When her husband, attorney Gaby Pillay, was detained by the security police under the Terrorism Act, she represented him herself.

She also helped establish key rights for prisoners on Robben Island.

In 1986, Pillay and the late Professor Anshu Padayachee started the Advice Desk for Abused Women in Durban, running it from their own homes at a time when there was little help for women facing violence.

The desk later moved to the campus of the former University of Durban-Westville and changed its name to the Advice Desk for the Abused, so that it could also help children, elderly people and people with disabilities.

The organisation estimates it has assisted with more than 500,000 cases over four decades.

Padayachee, a criminology lecturer who later became acting vice-chancellor of the ML Sultan Technikon, died in July 2023.

Pat Moodley, of the Advice Desk for the Abused, said the organisation was ecstatic at the news.

“This is global recognition of her unwavering fight for human rights for all,” Moodley said.

“She is truly a beacon of truth and justice for the world.

“Though her career spanned the highest halls of justice in the world, and her judgments, speeches and writings are a testament to her journey, Judge Navi has always made time for our struggles at home.”

Moodley said Pillay had delivered the keynote address at the desk’s 40th anniversary celebration in June, and had always been willing to accept invitations to events that raised awareness of human rights.

“On a personal note, she has been a friend and mentor since I joined the profession as a young lawyer,” Moodley said.

“I attribute my journey to having women like Navi, who went fearlessly into the world to protect the rights of the vulnerable.”

Environmental activist Desmond D’Sa said Pillay was a person of deep humility and a judge of rare ability.

“Navi Pillay is a wonderful human being of deep humility,” D’Sa told IOL.

“We were fortunate to have a judge of a very high calibre of knowledge and experience.

“My encounter with Judge Pillay, whilst always cordial, brought out the best response, which I really respected.

“Congratulations on this wonderful award, truly deserved.”

In the early 1990s, Pillay was a member of the Women’s National Coalition, which helped secure an equality clause in the Constitution barring discrimination on grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation.

In 1995, after apartheid ended, she became the first woman who was not white to serve as a judge of the High Court of SA.

That same year, the UN General Assembly elected her a judge of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, set up to try those behind the 1994 genocide, and she led it as president from 1999 to 2003.

She served as a judge of the International Criminal Court in The Hague from 2003 to 2008, and as UN high commissioner for human rights from 2008 to 2014.

Back home, she chaired a special reference group set up in KwaZulu-Natal to investigate the causes of attacks on migrants.

Until recently, she chaired the UN commission of inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory, and she is now a judge on the International Court of Justice in the case in which Myanmar stands accused of genocide, the Nobel committee said.

The committee said her influence was a significant factor when the Rwanda tribunal established that rape and sexual violence could amount to a crime against humanity and to genocide.

In the same case, she was instrumental in another legal first, when an accused faced charges of incitement to commit genocide purely for spreading propaganda, the committee said.

The committee said her independence, expertise and steadfastness had made her one of the most respected international jurists of the time.

Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes read the announcement at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo in a broadcast streamed live around the world.

“Navi Pillay has held states and national leaders accountable and brought hope to victims of violence and conflict,” the committee said.

“A common thread runs from her early work defending [the late former president] Mandela and others who stood up against apartheid to her service as a judge in some of the key international court cases of our time.

“The system of international law is under tremendous pressure, and its institutions are under attack.

“We see a shift towards power politics at the expense of legal frameworks and global respect for law and justice.

“The judges, those who guard the thin red line between order and chaos, are therefore highly deserving of our praise.

“But today, as these same judges are sanctioned, and their institutions are attacked, we need people of courage, vision and determination, qualities that Navi Pillay demonstrates in her work on the bench.

“Navi Pillay’s commitment to justice and human dignity is a source of hope and inspiration to all who seek to bring about a more peaceful world.”

The committee chose Pillay from 287 nominees, 208 individuals and 79 organisations, in the year the peace prize marks its 125th anniversary.

The prize, worth 12 million Swedish kronor, will be presented to her in Oslo on December 10.

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