Advocate Vusi Pikoli

Advocate Vusi Pikoli is Adjunct Professor at the Nelson Mandela School. He is well known as the fiercely independent former National Director of Public Prosecutions currently serves as Chief Risk and Compliance Officer at the South African Airways. Advocate Pikoli played a key role in constitutional negotiations for a democratic South Africa and served in the Department of Justice for 15 years (1994-2009). As National Director of Public Prosecutions he was first suspended and then fired for pursuing corruption charges against powerful individuals, including the former police commissioner and head of Interpol, Jackie Selebi. This is documented in his memoir with Mandy Wiener, My Second Initiation. More recently he has been a special advisor to the Minister of State Security, the Police Ombudsman for the Western Cape (2014-2018) and a commissioner on the Khayelitsha Commission of Enquiry into police inefficiency. Advocate Pikoli completed his BA (Law) & LLB at the National University of Lesotho in 1984; an LLM in Legislative drafting at the University of Zimbabwe in 1988; Business Leadership at the Wharton Business School, Pennsylvania in 1996. In 1994 he was appointed as special advisor to the Minister of Justice, where he played a key role in constitutional negotiations for a democratic South Africa. In 1995 he was admitted to practice as an Advocate of the High Court in South Africa.