Advocate Kemp J Kemp SC, best known for defending former president Jacob Zuma during his 2006 rape trial, has died after contracting Covid-19.
Dr Llewellyn Curlewis, a former president of the Law Society of the Northern Provinces and currently on the management committee of the Gauteng Legal Practice Council, said that Kemp had a brilliant and sharp legal mind.
‘He was one of the most brilliant brains in the South African legal fraternity and this is a big loss for the law and the legal fraternity itself. On behalf of the legal fraternity, especially in the former Transvaal, Eastern Gauteng division of the Legal Practice Council, our deepest condolences go out to the family and friends of this colleague.’
Barry Skinner, chairperson of the Kwa-Zulu Natal Bar, described Kemp as ‘one of the real characters of the Bar’.
‘He was brilliant in his field, but he was a very humble person and (was) always open to helping people. He will be hugely missed.’
Of the ‘Stalingrad’ strategy he adopted in the Zuma rape case, Kemp said: ‘This is not a battle where you send a champion out and have a little fight and that’s it – this is more like we will fight them in every room, in every street, in every house.’
Kemp withdrew from Zuma’s legal team in 2018 when the former president reportedly ran out of money to pay his legal team.
- The photograph shows the moment when Zuma was acquitted in 2006.