The Inspecting Judge of the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), Justice Edwin Cameron, on behalf of all in the Inspectorate, expresses heartfelt condolence to the family and friends of Justice Trengove, who died earlier this week.

 Trengove was born in Stellenbosch on 3 October 1919. He leaves his spouse, Izabel, four children and fourteen grandchildren.

Justice Trengove lived a life of conscience and commitment in an unconscientious society.  He was the first Inspecting Judge (1998-1999), handpicked by President Nelson Mandela to establish and head the inspectorate (then called the inspectorate of prisons) when the new correctional services statute created the post in 1998.

This week, in the aftermath of his death, JICS staffers who with him laid the groundwork for the organisation, recalled his qualities as a human being and a judge.

He personified humbleness and quiet focus.  He was committed to developing all around him as well as those within correctional centres.

All JICS’s new employees had to undertake a correctional centre visit within the first week of employment – and then were required to give feedback about the experience.  His objective was to ensure that all new employees were aligned with the principled and humane vision he had for JICS.

He believed that human rights could be respected and maintained in a security environment.  “Security and human rights”, he once stated, “are not competing rights – they must cohabitate in the same correctional centre environment.”

Trengove’s legacy of rehabilitation and reintegration of inmates remains an integral part of JICS’s vision.  This incorporates and encourages community involvement. His conviction was that responsibility in this was shared between offenders and the community.  This made strong community ties a crucial element in rehabilitation and reintegration.

Before Trengove was appointed Inspecting Judge, he had an illustrious legal career.  After graduating with glittering distinction from the University of Pretoria, he started practise as an advocate in 1946.  He took silk (Senior Counsel status) in 1960 and served on the Pretoria Bar Council (chairperson in 1966) as well as on the General Council of the Bar of South Africa.

From 1967 to 1978 he served as a High Court Judge in Johannesburg and Pretoria.  In 1978, he was appointed to the Appellate Division (now Supreme Court of Appeal).  He served there until 1986.

During his tenure, the current Inspecting Judge appeared before him, with Advocate Gilbert Marcus, led by Advocate Jack Unterhalter, SC, in a justly renowned decision, More v Minister of Cooperation and Development (19 September 1985).  At issue was a particularly shameful race-based eviction and relocation of the Bakwena baMagopa (Bakwena baMogopa) – a rural community with centuries-old ties to its land (http://www.saha.org.za/landact1913/mogopa.htm).  The Pretoria high court refused the community, led by Mr Jacob More, an interdict against the unlawful government order.  It then refused leave to appeal – which had the effect that the legal hold on removal was vacated and the refusal of relief took effect immediately.  Government forces carried out a grievous eviction.

On appeal, it was clear that Justice Trengove was deeply troubled.  The government argued that the law issues were moot since the removal had taken place.  He differed.  He wrote a decision declaring that the removal was unlawful.

The More case was decided at a time of real decline in the apartheid rule of law.  The appeal court decision was one of the few cases that, against the trend, nurtured hope for the rule of law and dignity under the law.

Justice Trengove’s judgment is further credited with helping put an end to forced removals.

He took early retirement at the end of 1986.  He was only 67.  The decision cost him appreciably in pension benefits.  Why did this conscientious judge decide to go?  It was because of the growing “security mindset” in the then-appeal court, headed by the apartheid-leaning Chief Justice Pierre Rabie.

Though Rabie concurred in Trengove’s decision in More, he thereafter overruled an order requiring the apartheid government in Namibia (then Southwest Africa) to release a detainee.  Trengove dissented (Cabinet of Interim Government of SWA (http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZASCA/1986/156.html)).  Rabie thereafter systematically excluded Trengove from “security” cases.

What was conspicuous about Trengove’s departure from Rabie’s appeal court is that he agreed to serve on the Courts of Appeal of Lesotho and Swaziland and also as an Acting Judge on the High Courts of Botswana and Namibia.

In addition, he agreed to serve as a trustee of the Legal Resources Centre.  The rebuke to his apartheid-minded colleagues was inescapable.

His quiet, principled resistance to apartheid was recognised when President Mandela appointed him to an acting position on South Africa’s new Constitutional Court.

We at JICS pay deep respect to a force for goodness, justice and respect, in Justice John James Trengove.  His passing leaves our country’s legal system with his legacy of justice, but the poorer for his passing.

JICS Trengove John EC tribute 9July2020