Ghanaian Okyerebea Ampofo-Anti moved to South Africa when she was nine years old and knew by then that she wanted to pursue law. “I like to fight on behalf of others because injustice irks me,” she says. “I’ve always been a spokesperson, so it was a natural fit. I enjoy finding answers to complex questions, and the debate and reasoning aspect of law. I like that practising law isn’t abstract – you’re dealing with real people and situations.”
With an intense work ethic and talent, she started as a candidate attorney in 2007 at Webber Wentzel and has risen through the ranks to become a salaried partner. She works at the forefront of the Dispute Resolution unit, with her main expertise being media law for print and broadcast. Ampofo-Anti works on defamation and privacy breach issues, and assists people who need access.
While she’s enjoyed a successful career, she says subtle racism – not only in the legal profession but within the whole of corporate SA – is one of the main stumbling blocks. “You feel like you’re being shadow-boxed throughout,” she says. “You can’t help but notice the subtle things, like being undermined by a white client who insists on having your case overseen. You’re constantly second-guessing yourself.”
Slow transformation is a multilayered problem. “The bottom line is bringing in the big clients, and having your credibility and ability constantly questioned as a black professional makes it difficult for people to entrust you with important matters,” she says. The direct result is that black partners have fewer lucrative clients. Ampofo-Anti suggests that partners recommend each other and demonstrate full confidence in one another to alleviate the problem. “We need to support and promote black lawyers because legal advice is about trust – we deal with major money and major issues. I don’t believe that black professionals are being supported by black business enough or even by government.”
While government has strategised to uplift smaller firms, she thinks training and expertise is still situated in historically white firms. The best bet is to grow partners who will hire black professionals, and proper transformation will happen in time.
She believes that the ultimate transformation will be when there are black-run or black-owned corporate law firms in the same league as other big firms. “It’s on the horizon because there’s a generation of black legal experts who have had access to the same training. If they all stood together, we could create a competing full-service law firm that does everything that’s commercially required.”
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