Judge Frederik Daniël Jacobus (Fritz) Brand has been appointed chairperson of the Press Council of South Africa (PCSA).

His appointment follows the passing away of Judge Phillip Levinsohn earlier this year. Levinsohn served as the Press Council’s chair for 10 years.

Brand is a distinguished jurist and a former Acting Justice of the Constitutional Court.

Reacting to his appointment, Judge Brand says he considers a free press and an independent court system to be the two pillars of democracy in South Africa. “I am proud to have been a member of one of these pillars for more than 30 years, and I am now honoured by the invitation to become a member of the other.”

He noted that of special interest to him, both as an academic and a practising lawyer, has been the balance between protecting the freedom of the press and the protection of individual reputation and dignity, ‘which is essentially the balance served by the Press Council’.

Welcoming his appointment, Judge Bernard Ngoepe, the chairperson of the PCSA’s Appeals Panel, says: “There’s no doubt that the public will benefit from the depth of his knowledge when it comes to issues in the media. Under his leadership, the mechanism of independent media co-regulation will continue to be strengthened.”

Press Ombud Herman Scholtz says of the appointment: “Judge Brand has been a pioneer and a leading voice from the bench in legal fields most relevant to media practitioners and the media-consuming public, such as defamation and freedom of expression. He understands the environment in which the media operates, how the public is affected by the media, and the role of a responsible media in our country’s democracy.”

Brand was appointed to the High Court of South Africa, Good Hope Provincial Division, in 1992 and served until 2000, when he was appointed as an acting judge in the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. He was appointed permanently to that court with effect from December 1, 2001.

In 2010, he was appointed as an acting judge to the Constitutional Court for two terms, retaining his permanent position on the Supreme Court of Appeal bench. Since his retirement in 2015, Brand has held a permanent appointment on the bench of the Appeal Court of Botswana.

He has previously acted at the Court of Appeal in Lesotho and the Supreme Court of Namibia. In 2018, he was appointed to a position on the Supreme Court bench of Fiji. He has also been invited to join the Qatar International Commercial Court in Doha.

Brand maintains a keen interest in the academic study of the law. He has presented numerous lectures at universities around the world and is a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Lawin Hamburg, Germany.

He is responsible for the titles ‘Defamation’ and ‘Enrichment’ in the latest edition of the Law of South Africa and has co-authored two handbooks on comparative studies between South African and Scots law. He serves as the chairperson of the Hugo de Groot Society, which publishes the Contemporary Journal for Roman-Dutch Law.

An esteemed member of the Judicial Education Committee in South Africa and the Commonwealth Judicial Education Institute, Brand was awarded the LLD (honoris causa) by the University of the Free State in 2012 and, in 2014, became an honorary professor in private law at the University of Stellenbosch. He was awarded the degree LLD (honoris causa) from the University of Stellenbosch in 2021.

Brand serves on the Advisory Council of the Law Faculty of the University of the Free State and as a trustee of the Stellenbosch Law Faculty Trust.

He and his wife Elaine live in Stellenbosch. They have three children and four grandchildren.