Biography
Ms. Thandiwe Matthews is a South African attorney, who forms part of a joint PhD scholarship programme between the ISS and the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Law (under the South African Research Chair in Law, Equality and Social Justice). Her doctoral research adopts a socio-legal approach to explore the role of constitutionally protected human rights to address structural inequalities of race, gender, class and age in post-1994 South Africa, with a specific focus on the right to social protection. Her academic interests lie in analysing the relationship between human rights, governance, the economy and society, and her work has been published in the Oxford Journal of Human Rights Practice, the South African Journal on Human Rights and Development Southern Africa.
Prior to commencing her doctoral studies, Thandiwe was appointed as a Senior Researcher: Civil and Political Rights at the SA Human Rights Commission, where she was also a Senior Legal Officer, monitoring the advancement and protection of human rights. She started her legal career at DLA Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr in Johannesburg, first as a candidate attorney and later appointed as an Associate: Dispute Resolution.
She is an alumna of the US State Department’s Fulbright - Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Programme (2015/2016) based at the University of Minnesota’s Law School, and worked at Human Rights Watch in New York as a professional affiliate focusing on global human rights monitoring methods to reducing inequalities.
Thandiwe holds a Masters in Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Bachelor of Laws (University of the Witwatersrand) and a Bachelor of Social Sciences (University of Cape Town).
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Work
- Thandiwe Matthews (2020) - Traversing the cracks: Social Protection toward the achievement of Social Justice, Equality and Dignity in South Africa - [link]
- Jeff Handmaker & Thandiwe Matthews (2019) - Analysing legal mobilisation’s potential to secure equal access to socioeconomic justice in South Africa - Development Southern Africa, 36 (6), 889-904 - doi: 10.1080/0376835X.2019.1675496 - [link]
- Thandiwe Matthews (2019) - To be equal and free: The nexus between human rights and democracy - [link]
- Thandiwe Matthews (2018) - Opportunities and challenges in the implementation of rights-based approaches to development: An overview of the right to development in Africa - [link]
- Megan Manion, Robert Ralston, Thandiwe Matthews & Ian Allen (2017) - Budget Analysis as a Tool to Monitor Economic and Social Rights: Where the Rubber of International Commitment Meets the Road of Government Policy - Journal of Human Rights Practice, 9, 146-158 - doi: 10.1093/jhuman/hux002
- Thandiwe Matthews (2017) - Within its available resources’: An assessment of South African government spending on socio-economic rights from 2008/09 to 2017/18 - [link]
- Thandiwe Matthews & Charmika Samaradiwakera-Wijesundara (2015) - The fiction of transformation: An analysis of the relationship between law, society and the legal profession in South Africa - South African Journal of Human Rights
- Thandiwe Matthews (2015) - The Politics of Principle: The First South African Constitutional Court, 1995-2005, Theunis Roux: book review - South African Journal on Human Rights, 434 - [link]
