John Wessels


Sir Johannes Wilhelmus Wessels was an Afrikaner judge of the Appellate Division from 1923 to 1936 and Chief Justice of South Africa from 1932 to 1936.

Career

After the end of the Second Boer War, the government of the newly created British Colony of Transvaal established a Supreme Court of Transvaal in April 1902. The governor, Lord Milner, appointed Wessels as one of three puisne judges, with Sir James Rose Innes as Chief Justice. On the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, he became a judge of the Transvaal Provincial Division.