South African Activist Rashida Manjoo Is 2008-09
Des Lee Visiting Professor for Global Awareness


Rashida Manjoo (LLM) is an Advocate of the High Court of South Africa and a Research Associate in the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town, South Africa. As an activist, academic, and lawyer, Manjoo has worked on a diverse range of issues. Her current research interests include legal pluralism and transitional justice issues, with a primary focus on gender justice. She has recently returned from Harvard Law School where she taught in the Human Rights Program.

Manjoo was a member of the Commission on Gender Equality (CGE), a constitutional body mandated to oversee the promotion and protection of gender equality, and served for five years as the Parliamentary Commissioner. Prior to being appointed to the CGE she was involved in social context training for judges and lawyers where she has designed both content and methodology during her time at the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit—University of Cape Town and at the University of Natal, Durban.

Manjoo was involved in setting up both a national and a provincial network on violence against women. She is the founder of the Gender Unit at the Law Clinic at the University of Natal and also the Domestic Violence Assistance Programme at the Durban Magistrates Court (the first such project in a court in South Africa). She has also been involved in the Provincial Executive of the Women’s Coalition, a forum that was set up pre-democracy to formulate the Women’s Charter (a document setting out the demands of women in a new democracy). Manjoo was also an active member of the Women’s Caucus for Gender Justice in the International Criminal Court and remains an Advisory Board member. She is a member of the Women living under Muslim Laws Network.