SAIFAC is a non-governmental, not-for-profit, tax-exempt research institute, operating from historic premises on Constitution Hill, Johannesburg, in close proximity to the South African Constitutional Court and its library. It was established in April 2004 under a Deed of Trust registered with the Master of the High Court in Pretoria. The founding Chairperson of the SAIFAC Board of Trustees, Justice Laurie Ackermann, was one of the first eleven judges appointed to serve on the South African Constitutional Court, having previously been a judge of the Transvaal High Court and, from September 1987, the first Harry Oppenheimer Chair of Human Rights Law at the University of Stellenbosch.
Before his retirement from the Constitutional Court in January 2004, Justice Ackermann was one of two judges principally responsible for the development of the Court’s library collection. The initial impetus behind SAIFAC’s establishment was the recognition that this collection was a public resource that should be utilised for the promotion of constitutional democracy in South Africa and Africa more broadly. Connected to this idea, and flowing from his experience as a judge and a legal academic, was Justice Ackermann’s belief in the value of judicial-academic dialogue, and the contribution such dialogue can make to human rights and democratisation in Africa.
With this vision in mind, Justice Ackermann approached the Ford Foundation for a three-year establishment grant, covering the costs of a Director to run the institute and his/her Personal Assistant, and also the costs of a Research Sabbatical Programme for Judges and Academics. The funding application was granted in April 2004 and the first Director, Professor Theunis Roux, appointed in November of that year. Professor Roux came to SAIFAC from the University of the Witwatersrand, where he had held the post of Reader in Law and Project Head of the Law and Transformation Programme at the Centre for Applied Legal Studies. Shortly before his appointment, at the October 2004 meeting of the SAIFAC Board, Professor Roux proposed the expansion of SAIFAC’s programmes to include, in addition to the Research Sabbatical Programme for Judges and Academics, a Doctoral Fellowship Programme, a Full-time Researcher Programme and a Public Seminar Series. All of these programmes have subsequently been established, together with two further programmes: a Part-time Postgraduate Research Fellowship Programme, and an LLM Studentship Programme.