Nicole Fritz
Executive Director

Nicole Fritz is the Executive Director of the Southern Africa Litigation Centre. She obtained her LL.B. (cum laude) from the University of the Witwatersrand and thereafter completed an LL.M. in International Legal Studies at NYU Law School as a Hauser Global Scholar.

She has taught constitutional and international law at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Law School and human rights law at Fordham Law School in New York. She has also worked at Fordham’s Crowley Program in International Human Rights. She served as law clerk to Justice Richard Goldstone at South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Currently, she is an extraordinary lecturer at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for Human Rights, on the advisory board of the African Human Rights Law Reports and the editorial board of the Constitutional Court Review.

Priti Patel
Deputy Director and HIV Programme Manager

Before joining SALC, Priti Patel was an attorney in the Law and Security Program at Human Rights First. In that capacity, she led field missions to Afghanistan, monitored military commission trials at Guantanamo Bay, and worked on amicus briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. She also clerked for former Chief Justice Arthur Chaskalson and Justice Catherine O’Regan on the Constitutional Court of South Africa from 2002-2003 and was a Fulbright scholar in Durban, South Africa, where she taught history at the University of Durban-Westville and conducted research on African-Indian relations in Durban.

Priti graduated with a B.A. in History from Columbia University in 1997 and received her law degree from New York University School of Law in 2002.

Lloyd Kuveya
Project Lawyer, Regional Advocacy Programme

After graduating from the Judicial College of Zimbabwe, Lloyd Kuveya worked has a Magistrate for fours years. He holds a LLB from the University of Zimbabwe, and completed a LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria in South Africa. Lloyd has been a member of the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights since 2002 and completed an internship with them in his final year of studying at the University of Zimbabwe.

Abeda Bhamjee
Project Lawyer, Prisoners Rights

Abeda Bhamjee has been a project lawyer on the penal reform programme since 2008.  A graduate from the University of Witwatersrand, she holds an LLM degree.  Before joining SALC she headed up the refugee unit of Wits Law Clinic for six years and taught constitutional, refugee and delictual law at the University of Witwatersrand.  Abeda also has extensive experience in training on human rights and administrative justice.

Matilda Lasseko
Right to Information Fellow

Matilda graduated with an LLB (cum laude) from the University of Pretoria in 2007.  She received a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Programme (DAAD) in 2008 to pursue an LLM in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa with the Centre for Human Rights at the University of Pretoria in conjunction with the University of Ghana, Legon.  She served as an intern at Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative Accra, Ghana between August and December 2008.  In 2009 she was contracted by the International Commission of Jurists-Kenya to write a chapter in the Judicial Watch Review Series on the transitional justice process in Kenya.  Immediately prior to joining SALC, she served as Law Researcher to Justice Zak Yacoob at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Alan Wallis
Project Lawyer, International Criminal Justice

Alan graduated with an LLB from the University of Cape Town in 2007 and thereafter completed a Post Graduate Diploma in international environmental law also at the University of Cape Town. Prior to joining SALC, Alan served as a law clerk to Justice Bess Nkabinde at the Constitutional Court of South Africa.

Melody Kozah
Project Lawyer, HIV Programme

Melody Kozah holds an LL.M. in Human Rights and an LL.B. from the University of Cape Town. Prior to joining SALC, she worked as a Research Assistant for Ms Kelly Phelps in the Public Law Department at the University of Cape Town.

Nyasha Chingore-Munazvo 
Project Lawyer, HIV Programme

Prior to joining SALC  Nyasha was a researcher and project manager at the Centre for the Study of AIDS, University of Pretoria, where she headed the CSA’s collaboration with the Centre for Human Rights – the AIDS and Human Rights Research Unit.  In addition to managing several research projects, she ran a justice sector stakeholder training project which trained magistrates, public prosecutors and lawyers on HIV and the law as well as worked with National Human Rights Commissions in SADC and managed a paralegal advice centre. Nyasha holds an LLM in Human Rights and Democratization in Africa from the  University of Pretoria and an LLBS from the University of Zimbabwe.

Kerry Anderson
Coordinator, AfricanLII

Kerry Anderson holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town and an MBA from the Gordon Institute of Business Science. She has been working with open source software and open systems in a variety of fields, including advertising, IT services and financial services before joining the free access to law movement, taking on the role of IT manager at the Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII). She joined SALC as a coordinator for the African Legal Information Institute project, focusing on the training and leveraging of regional technical resources in open source methodologies to support the IT requirements of new Legal Information Institutes. 

Mariya Badeva-Bright
Coordinator, AfricanLII

Mariya Badeva-Bright graduated in law from Plovdiv University, Bulgaria in 2001 and obtained her LL.M. in Information Technology and Law from Stockholm University, Sweden in 2003. In 2006, as a sessional lecturer at the School of Law, University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, she created and then taught until 2010 the Legal Information Literacy LL.B. course and coordinated and lectured the Cyberlaw LL.M. course. She was the Head of Legal Informatics and Policy at the Southern African Legal Information Institute, where she worked from its inception in 2006 until April 2010. Mariya joined SALC as a coordinator for the AfricanLII project with primary responsibilities in the areas of training, content, standards and policy development for AfricanLII and newly established LIIs.

Tererai Mafukidze
Coordinator, AfricanLII

Tererai Mafukidze is a graduate of with the University of Zimbabwe. He was admitted as a Legal Practitioner, Notary-Public and Conveyancer in the High Court of Zimbabwe in February 1997. He practised law in Zimbabwe and subsequently worked in commerce as a corporate lawyer and company secretary. He has served the Co-ordinator of the Southern African Chief Justices Forum (SACJF), Director of the Southern African Legal Information Institute (SAFLII) and Researcher to the Chief Justice of South Africa. Tererai joined SALC as a coordinator of the AfricanLII project.

Ethel Maphiwa-Ndlovu
Office Manager

Ethel Maphiwa-Ndlovu, holds a diploma in Secretarial studies from City & Guilds.  Prior to joining SALC, she worked for Afrimoda Custom Clothiers as an Administrator and served as a Personal Assistant for Liberty Life Assurance (Houghton Agency).  She is responsible for the day to day operation of the office.