As an academic, Justice van der Westhuizen has taught widely in South Africa and abroad, including at Yale Law School and in Germany and Canada; presented numerous papers at national and international conferences; authored and edited several publications; and participated in numerous radio and television programmes.

He was a legal adviser and member of the panel of advisers of SASO from 1973 to 1977, which was when SASO was declared an unlawful organisation. Thembile Lewis Skweyiya was born in Worcester in the Western Cape. He is married to Sayo Nomakhosi Skweyiya and they have four children.

After completing his junior primary schooling at Fannin government school, Vuka enrolled at the famous Loram Secondary School in Durban for a year. He then moved to Pholela Institution where he could not stand...

Internationally he is a member of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, doing duty at the Commonwealth Games in Manchester and Melbourne and at the Olympic Games in Athens and Beijing. He has also recently been ...

He was the first African lawyer to open a practice in Cape Town. As an interpreter he saw lawyers in action and he started wondering whether he could perform the role. There were no African attorneys in the Cape ...

In my early years I became involved in various community and sporting organisations and served inter alia as an executive member of local civic, sports clubs and the sports board of control. In later years I also served on the church council and its various subcommittees. I spent ten years in the Department of Justice being District, Regional Court Prosecutor

In 1974, he was appointed as acting judge in the Cape Provincial Division and three years later he became a permanent judge. He served as a member of the National Institute for Crime Prevention and Rehabilitation of Offenders

From 1967 to 1978 he served on the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court and on the Appellate Division from 1978 to 1986.