Jules Browde, South African lawyer and anti-apartheid activist, Died at 97

  Activist, Law

Jules Browde was born in 1919 in Johannesburg and died on May 31, 2016.

He was a South African advocate and acting judge as well as a human-rights activist and Jewish communal leader.

Jules and Nelson Mandela was classmates and a founder member of Lawyers for Human Rights.

He received his Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) and then joined the Union Defence Force in the early part of the Second World War.

When the war was nearly ended, Jules returned to Wits to continue his education; during that time, he became friends with Nelson Mandela, a fellow law student.

During 1996, two years after South Africa’s first democratic elections, Mandela appointed Browde to investigate irregularities in the appointment of various civil servants.

He was made a silk, or senior counsel, and went on to serve as an acting judge in South Africa as well as judge on the appeal courts of Lesotho and Swaziland, in 1969.

Jules Browde served as the president of the Johannesburg Bar Council on several occasions.

In July 2008, Jules Browde was recognized with the Sydney and Felicia Kentridge Award.

That award was made by the South African Bar Council for excellence in public interest law.

Professor Selma Browde was his wife, a renowned senior radiation oncologist at Wits and the Johannesburg group of hospitals.

Jules Browde passed away at 97 yrs old.