The Black Lawyers Associations (BLA) is deeply embarrassed by the unfounded criticism levelled against the elections of the Legal Practice Council (LPC)
5 October 2018
The BLA is aware of the wide spread criticism directed at the election process of the LPC conducted under the auspices of the National Forum on the Legal Profession (NF). BLA is deeply embarrassed by people like Mark Oppenheimer who champion, in the name of constitutionality, the perpetual exclusion of women and black legal practitioners in the governing structures of the legal profession. BLA would like to inform the public of the context which informed the rationale of the election procedure of the LPC. It must be recorded on the onset that the said election procedure of the LPC was approved by the National Assembly.
The legal profession is the only sector in the Republic of South Africa still to undergo a systematic process of transformation informed by an Act of Parliament underpinning the values of our Constitution. The Provincial Law Societies and the General Council of the Bar (GCB), the bodies which are currently regulating the legal profession, are all symbols of apartheid.
These symbols are governed by the pre democratic era Acts, being the Admission of Advocates Act 74 of 1964 and the Attorneys Act 53 of 1979. The intention of the Legal Practice Act 28 of 2014 (LPA) is to repeal these Acts and abolish all structures associated them. On this point alone it must be understood that the apartheid beneficiaries will not allow the transformation process to proceed unhindered.
Until 1998 when the BLA, the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADEL) and the Advocates for Transformation (AFT) entered the legal profession’s regulation space, its governance was in the hands of white males, hence it was once called the “white boys club”. The coming in of BLA, NADEL and AFT guaranteed equal representation of black and white in the governing structures of the profession.