Lifelong fighter for justice bows out

It was the unjust laws of apartheid that propelled Judge Dayalin Chetty towards a career in law – and in so doing, gave birth to a legal trailblazer. Speaking at a breakfast event hosted by BLC Attorneys at the Boardwalk Hotel yesterday, Chetty – known for presiding over the Christopher Panayiotou case – outlined his battle for social justice stretching over a career of nearly 50 years.

Chetty will be retiring from the bench in September.

His legal journey began when he was a teenager living in Schauderville.

“In my formative years, South Africa was a very different country,” Chetty said.

“Racial supremacy was the order of the day [and] legislation had reduced me to an alien in the country of my birth.

“The law prescribed where I should live, where I could walk [and] which school I could attend – and all these factors contributed to the decision that I would become a lawyer.”

Starting on this path had its own challenges in the apartheid years.

“The Separate Universities Act precluded me from studying in Port Elizabeth or anywhere else but Durban.

“I was classified as an Indian and therefore I could only study in Durban, [but] that is where our political education began because we started questioning [why] we were there.”

After missing his graduation ceremony in protest against the separation, Chetty was admitted to the bar in 1979 and immediately began fighting for social justice.

“The first brief I received was to have a very profound effect on the direction my life would take.

“In Colchester, there was a family who’d lived there for generations who were served with an eviction order through the Group Areas Act.

“I was briefed to represent the family. The entire proceedings were a farce because the decision to evict this family had already been taken.
“Shortly thereafter, I received another brief. The government had decided the entire community of Klipfontein – thousands of people – had to be moved to a place called Glenmore.

“[I was briefed to] stop the eviction and brought an urgent application in Grahamstown.”

Despite their opponents using the Prohibition of Bantu Interdicts Act – which effectively stopped anyone classified as a Bantu from bringing an interdict – Chetty and his colleague succeeded in stopping the eviction.

“This is where judicial activism came into play.

“There were some judges in those dark days of apartheid who had a social conscience.

“[However], we had alerted the state to the deficiencies in their application for eviction, [which were] then corrected and thousands of people were evicted.”

In his 23 years as a judge – of which two years were spent as an acting judge in the Supreme Court – Chetty said he had come across many memorable cases.

These included presiding over the divorce proceedings of former president FW de Klerk and the 2005 trial in which Mcebisi Jonas was acquitted of fraud around the sale of Mpekweni Resorts.

On the Panayiotou case, Chetty said he had had to deliver judgment quickly.

“It had to be done that way. The families had endured all that pain, both the accused’s and the deceased’s families.”

He said he had decided last year it was time to retire.

“Law is the business to which I’ve devoted my entire life.

“I’ve spent the last 47 years trying to learn it [and] I still haven’t accomplished it fully. I’ve had a long innings in the court. It’s time for me to spend time with my family.”