Lex Mpati

Lex Mpati (born 5 September 1949) is a South African retired judge who was the President of the Supreme Court of Appeal of South Africa from August 2008 to May 2016. He was appointed to the bench in February 1997 as a judge of the Eastern Cape Division and he joined the Supreme Court as a puisne judge in December 2000. Before his elevation to the presidency, he was the Supreme Court's first Deputy President from 2003 to 2008. He was also an acting judge in the Constitutional Court in 2007.

Born in Durban, Mpati grew up in the Eastern Cape, spending his childhood in Fort Beaufort and his adolescence in Grahamstown. He entered legal practice as an attorney in 1985 and was admitted as an advocate in 1989. In 1996, during a three-year stint at the Legal Resources Centre, he was appointed as Senior Counsel. Since 2013, he has been the chancellor of Rhodes University, his alma mater.