Yonga Madikizela has been selected as the Pius Langa Memorial Fellow at UCL for the 2026-27 academic year. This fellowship was established in 2021 to honour the late Chief Justice Pius Langa (1938 - 2013), a pivotal architect of transformative constitutionalism, by supporting emerging constitutional lawyers who aspire to continue that work.

Yonga Madikizela is a lawyer and legal researcher with a commitment to transformative legal practice. Currently, he serves as a law clerk at the Constitutional Court in the chambers of Justice Mathopo, having also clerked for Acting Justice Dambuza. A graduate of the University of Fort Hare, Yonga completed the Judicial Legal Researcher’s Course at the Judicial Institute for Africa (JIFA), University of Cape Town. His legal experience spans the Constitutional Court, the KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng Division of the High Courts, and Open Secrets, a non-profit promoting private sector accountability for economic crime and human rights violations in Southern Africa.

I am grateful to be a Pius Langa Memorial Fellow and to have the opportunity to pursue an LLM at University College London. My first encounter with former Chief Justice Pius Langa came when I picked up his judgment in Hyundai during my second year of law school, a decision that balanced individual privacy with the public interest in combating serious crime, written with the kind of careful reasoning that made constitutional law feel less doctrinal and more like a living conversation about the pursuit of justice envisioned in the Constitution. Although I never got to meet in person this fine mind, this formidable jurist and polyglot who spoke every South African language and dialect, Justice Langa's jurisprudence has profoundly shaped my understanding of law’s ethical demands.

I hope my studies at University College London will provide a robust, cross-disciplinary foundation (encompassing legal, regulatory, economic, political, and institutional dimensions) for developing a constitutional approach to competition law in South Africa. At a time when the judiciary faces criticism for limited expertise in handling complex commercial cases effectively, I aim to deepen my understanding of these areas of law, and to return home equipped to contribute to the ongoing work of transformation Justice Langa so profoundly believed our Constitution demands of us all.