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Advocate Shafie Ameermia.

International recognition for former town secretary

Date: 21 May 2017 By: Anton van Zyl

A former town secretary of Louis Trichardt and currently Commissioner in the SA Human Rights Commission, Mohamed Shafie Ameermia, was selected to receive the prestigious 2017 Robert G. Storey International Award for Leadership.

Many residents will still remember the soft-spoken Shafie Ameermia from his days when he was appointed as town secretary of the Greater Louis Trichardt Council. This was back in May 1999, four years after the first democratic elections took place. At that stage, the town secretary department was somewhat of a mess, following a string of resignations and some unfortunate politically motivated appointments. It was left to a young lawyer from Lenasia to try and restore order and also to lay the foundations for fair and accountable government structures.

Ameermia arrived with the right credentials and some experience. After finishing school in Lenasia, he studied law at Wits University. He practiced law for a while and in 1996 was admitted as an advocate.

From a very early age he developed a love for constitutional law, with the focus on human rights. His field of speciality was local government, believing that this is a form of government that can succeed in changing the lives of many people. Part of his earlier career also entailed teaching new councillors about their roles in local government.

Ameermia played an important role during the period to set mechanisms in place and pave the way for what was later to become the Makhado Municipality.

In 2001, he left the Soutpansberg to give his input at a higher level of governance. He took up office in the Limpopo Department of Education as legal advisor and assisted the provincial government in curbing fraud. During this period, he won one of the largest court cases involving tender fraud where the department managed to recover R37 million of the money. The money was used towards building flagship schools across Limpopo with state-of-the-art computer centres and science laboratories, the first of their kind in Limpopo.

“In 2006, in my capacity as Chief Director: Legal Services in the Department of Human Settlements in Limpopo, I was instrumental in a team that made it possible for the department to build 50 000 RDP houses, receive successive clean audit opinions from the Auditor General and win the Govan Mbeki National Housing Awards for enabling approximately 450 000 poor and indigent persons to move from informal settlements across the Limpopo Province into proper decent houses and live in dignity with proper and adequate basic services,” Ameermia said.

From 2011 to 2013, he was with the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture where, among other projects, he helped facilitate the building of community libraries across the Limpopo Province.

On 2 February 2014, Advocate Ameermia was appointed for a seven-year term as full-time Commissioner in the South African Human Rights Commission. He also became the Provincial Commissioner responsible for North West and Free State.

According to Advocate Ameermia, his biggest challenge was to make the Constitution and the Bill of Rights a living reality in South Africa and make legal services accessible and real for the poor and vulnerable members of society. “In 2016, the Commission, through its access to justice initiatives, had won a landmark Constitutional Court decision in the Flemix judgment against the microlender industry that unscrupulously robbed 250 000 farmworkers in the Western Cape of R168 billion. After this case, Parliament passed legislation to prevent this practice from happening again and now there has to be judicial oversight over every garnishee order by the magistrate before issuing an order,” he explained.

In April this year, the Center for American and International Law announced that the prestigious Robert G. Storey International Award for Leadership will this year be awarded to Advocate Ameermia. “… the Storey Award was established by us to pay tribute to our founder, Robert G. Storey.  It recognizes Dean Storey’s dedication to peace, justice and the rule of law in the international community,” writes the Vice President of the Center, Mr Mark Smith. The award is presented to a past academy participant who exhibits the qualities of leadership and integrity embodied in Dean Storey.

The award will be handed over during this year’s Symposium on Global Markets, which will be held on 12 and 13 June in Dallas, Texas.

Advocate Ameermia still has fond memories of his time spent in the Soutpansberg region. “My family first arrived in Makhado in 1999 and left in January 2003 for Polokwane. We take this opportunity of expressing our gratitude and thanks to all its wonderful people who graciously received us. We have fond memories of this beautiful part of South Africa, which we will always cherish wherever we go,” he said.

 

 
 
 

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Anton van Zyl

Anton van Zyl has been with the Zoutpansberger and Limpopo Mirror since 1990. He graduated from the Rand Afrikaans University (now University of Johannesburg) and obtained a BA Communications degree. He is a founder member of the Association of Independent Publishers.

 
 

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