South Africa’s prisons have long stood as stark reminders of the nation’s colonial and apartheid legacies\, and in re cent decades\, mass incarceration and sentencing inflation have persisted a s entrenched facets of its criminal justice system. At the start of the dem ocratic era\, world-famous prisoner turned president Nelson Rolihlahla Mand ela led a government committed to humane conditions of imprisonment and res torative justice. In the decades since\, however\, South Africa has reverte d to a reliance on prisons—yet crime and violence have persisted. These dev elopments raise fundamental questions about the role that prisons play in s haping\, and at times undermining\, efforts toward a safer and more just so ciety.
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Justice Edwin Cameron was appointe d a judge by President Mandela in 1994. After retiring with 25 years’ servi ce\, he was elected Chancellor of Stellenbosch University (2019-2024)\, and President Ramaphosa appointed him Inspecting Judge of prisons. A human rig hts lawyer under apartheid\, Cameron helped secure the historic inclusion o f sexual orientation in South Africa’s Constitution. Cameron was an outspok en critic of then-President Mbeki’s AIDS-denialist policies. He has written two memoirs\, Witness to AIDS (2005)\, and Justice: A Personal Account (20 14). He remains the only person holding public office in Africa to state pu blicly that he is living with HIV/AIDS. President Ramaphosa awarded him Sou th Africa’s highest civilian honour\, the Order of the Baobab (Gold). In 20 23\, President Masisi appointed him as a non-resident member of the Court o f Appeal of Botswana.
Rebecca Gore worked as a law c lerk at the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services under Inspectin g Judge Edwin Cameron. She also clerked at the Constitutional Court of Sout h Africa. She holds a law degree (LLB) from the University of Cape Town and a Master of Laws (LLM) from Harvard Law School. Rebecca was awarded the He nigson Human Rights Fellowship\, where she was hosted by the Clooney Founda tion for Justice and the UN Working Group on discrimination against women a nd girls. She was also awarded the Irving Oberman Memorial Prize for her pa per Rethinking Crime & Punishment: Women Who Kill their Abusers in South Af rica. She is currently training to become an advocate (barrister equivalent ) in South Africa.
Sohela Surajpal works for the Jud icial Inspectorate for Correctional Services as a law clerk and legal resea rcher to Inspecting Judge Edwin Cameron. Before this\, she did advocacy wor k on the rights of sexual and gender minorities in Africa at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights and clerked for Justice Mbuyiseli Ma dlanga at the Constitutional Court. She has a Master of Laws in Democracy a nd Human Rights in Africa from the University of Pretoria. Her interest in prisons began when she wrote her LLM mini-dissertation on Prison Abolition as a Decolonial and Human Rights Imperative in Africa.
Abadir M. Ibrahim (moderator) is the Associate Director of the Human Rig hts Program (HRP) at Harvard Law School. He plays a substantive and manager ial role in innovating and implementing academic activities\, including the speaker series\, conferences\, and the HRP’s various fellowships. Ibrahim’ s research agenda focuses on African approaches to human rights and his bro ader research interests encompass the intersections between global human ri ghts normative structures and non-Western cultural/religious institutions a nd traditions with an emphasis on normative ethics and religion.
CATEGORIES:Book Talk LOCATION:Zoom GEO:40.712728;-74.006015 ORGANIZER;CN="Valenia Bergier":MAILTO:vbergier@law.harvard.edu URL;VALUE=URI:https://hls.harvard.edu/events/behind-prison-walls-unlocking- a-safer-south-africa/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://hls.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Untitled-23.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/New_York BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0500 TZOFFSETTO:-0400 DTSTART:20250309T070000 TZNAME:EDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR