AUDIO: Profile on Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa
In 15 years on the Bench, Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa has heard a few high-profile cases, but they will all be eclipsed by the drama and worldwide scrutiny of the Oscar Pistorius murder trial.
The Justice Department is expecting 300 journalists to cover the case, double the scrum that attended the Paralympian's bail hearings and Judge Masipa is considering formal requests to allow live television broadcasts of the proceedings in the Pretoria High Court.
She was a crime reporter whose stories often told of the indignities of life under apartheid, and went on to become an advocate in her late 40s.
She was named a judge in the Transvaal division in 1998, becoming only the second black woman on the Bench after former Constitutional Court Judge Yvonne Mokgoro.
Among her judgments that have made news were the sentencing of serial rapist and robber Shepherd Moyo and the dismissal of sacked Eskom chief executive Jacob Maroga's claim for R85 million in compensation.
Masipa ruled in favour of Eskom and the Public Enterprises Department. Her comments included salient delineation of the government's powers in relation to state-owned enterprises.
At a time when Maroga's case reportedly divided government sympathies, she remarked in her ruling: A shareholder does not have the right to interfere in the decision-making of the board in respect to the company's internal affairs.
After the Justice Department announced she would hear the Pistorius case, the media have focused attention on two judgments in which she handed down maximum sentences to men convicted of violence against women.
The Moyo case was one of these. Delivered in May last year, it saw Masipa hand down a 252-year sentence she said was intended to serve as a deterrent.
She said in her judgment the three rape victims of the man who carried out a spate of house robberies in Johannesburg had been left traumatised for life, and his lack of remorse made it unlikely he could be rehabilitated.
“The worst, in my view, is that he attacked and raped the victims in the sanctity of their own homes where they thought they were safe, she said.
Masipa's peers say her legal prowess and eloquence are coupled with a diffident nature that does not gravitate to the spotlight she will endure from March 3.
-SAPA