Last conversation with SA legal giant who tried to make the world a better place - Prof Christof Heyns

Professor Christof Heyns occupied various roles at the University of Pretoria's law faculty - including Dean, Director of the Centre for Human Rights and the founding Director of the Institute for Comparative Law in Africa (where he made the faculty a magnet for talented African students). Internationally, he shone as UN Special Rapporteur and subsequently as a member of the Committee of the Human Rights Commission. Heyns chaired the UN independent investigation on Burundi and was instrumental in rewriting several UN protocols. He passed away at the age of 62, without having seen his father's murderer brought to justice. Johan Heyns, the former moderator of the Dutch Reformed Church was gunned down at his Pretoria home in 1994. However, he did help to rewrite the 'Minnesota Protocol', the gold standard for investigations into unlawful death. To colleagues, Christof Heyns was the guitar playing professor. To his friends, he was the easy-going intellectual who loved to tell jokes. In what was probably one of the last interviews he did, Heyns told BizNews that he remained positive that liberal values - which have taken a knock in recent years - will prevail, and that the idea of human rights is "alive and strong". Despite the murder of his father and the many atrocities he investigated, he always saw the glass of life as half-full. This interview was conducted in October 202o. Heyns passed away in March 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices