University of Pretoria Human Rights Centre, South Africa,
Memorial Service in Honor of Professor Charles Ngwena
February 6, 2025
by Rebecca Cook, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Canada
I regret not being able to join you in person to celebrate the life of Charles Ngwena and to give you hugs of condolences, especially Patricia, Gideon and Claudia, and to congratulate you on all that you have done to make the Pretoria Human Rights Centre the vibrant place that it is and Charles’ academic home that facilitated so much of his work and now sadly this Memoriam to his life.
My husband Bernard Dickens and I were fortunate to meet Charles in 2000 in Helsinki at the Conference of the World Association for Medical Law. He was then and continued to be throughout his life a scholar and a gentleman to the core, with his eyes clearly on the horizon. We reached out to collaborate with him, and within a year we co-authored an article and continued to forge many academic collaborations. He taught at the University of Toronto Law Faculty as a Visiting Scholar, and I taught initially at the Law Faculty of the University of the Free State and then at the University of Pretoria’s Human Rights Centre.
Charles’ scholarship was exceptionally rigorous, accepting nothing short of excellence. It was characterized by his vision, his compassion and his courage. It was grounded in a profound understanding of the realities of the most vulnerable.
It was inspirational, and sometimes intimidating, to write with him with his mixture of pragmatism, humanity and understanding of how law and life could be harmfully raced and gendered. His open, progressive mind enabled the ideas to flow and his fine sensitivity to language allowed those ideas to be articulated in accessible ways.
As a colleague, his work ethic was exceptionally disciplined and respectful of others, always responding in a timely fashion, meeting deadlines, thus characterizing him as a “Finisher”.
For all these qualities and more, he was highly sought after
- For his advice and counsel, such as by the World Health Organization for his membership on its Scientific and Ethical Review Group of the WHO Programme on Human Reproduction and by many civil society organizations;
- For his editorial skill by the Int’l J. of Gyn and Obstetrics for his co-editorship of its ethical and legal section.
While his sad departure leaves us with heavy hearts, we must remember how very fortunate we have been to have had him in our lives with his affirming friendship and collegiality, and to know that his legacy, as a first-rate scholar and a gentle gentleman, will continue to illuminate our understanding of what it means to be human.