MORE ABOUT US
The Group began with a lease that one of its founders signed in his own name.
Spring Day, 2003
On 1 September 2003 a new group of advocates opened its doors at Sandown Village in Sandton. It called itself Fountain Chambers. Of its twenty-six members, more than sixty per cent had been at the Bar for less than five years, and nine were women.
Three were silks: Norman Arendse SC, Eric Dunn SC and Vincent Maleka SC, who became the first group leader.
Patric Mtshaulana had signed the lease. He, Terry Motau and William Mokhare stood surety for it, and a few members paid the deposit themselves. Some sceptics said they were dusting off their insolvency textbooks. Mtshaulana had an answer for them.
“It is bad to fail, but worse never to have tried to succeed.”
The covenant
The founders did not wait for the profession to change. They wrote the remedy into their own arrangements.
“We have set up chambers in which the more senior members of our group will pay more Group fees in order to subsidise the very junior members. Those members of our group who have just started will contribute as little as possible.”
No junior, they resolved, should have to leave the Bar because of the rent.
Partners in the work
A room is not a practice. The founders said plainly that advocates could not pass on skills by themselves, and that attorneys and clients had to play their part. Some did.
Werksmans and Telkom agreed that in every substantial Telkom matter a junior from the Group would be briefed as an additional junior. The founders were careful to say that this was no admission that black advocates do lesser work. It was an introduction. One junior first briefed in this way soon held a brief from the same attorneys in her own right.
Webber Wentzel Bowens agreed that when its human rights department needed counsel for communities without means, members of the Group would act for them without charge.
“We at Fountain Chambers believe that Advocates are citizens and, as such, have obligations to the less fortunate members of society.”
Why his name
On the day the chambers opened, the founders said whose example they were following.
“We at the Fountain Group are inspired by Advocates such as Duma Nokwe. He was a lawyer who found loopholes within the apartheid laws to defend his clients against the inhuman pass laws. At the same time he dedicated his whole life to changing the law from what it was to what it ought to be.”
In time the Group took his name. On 5 December 2009 the Johannesburg Bar gathered at our chambers to unveil a bronze bust of Nokwe at the entrance. President Jacob Zuma spoke. Messages were read from Nelson Mandela, GeorgeBizos SC, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe, Chief Justice Sandile Ngcobo, former Chief Justice Pius Langa and Justice Albie Sachs.
Michael Kuper SC put a challenge to the Group that day, and we still answer to it.
“A group that bears the name of Duma Nokwe does not justify itself if it was simply another group of advocates.”
The group today
The Group must write this block itself, because nothing in the folder covers the years after 2009. It needs three or four sentences on the move to The Place at 1 Sandton Drive,the present number of members and silks, the members who have gone to the Bench, and the Legacy Wall at reception.
“Remember that we are makers and participants of history and not its victims.” – Patric Mtshaulana, 1 September 2003