Durkje Gilfillan-Weidema was born on 2 September 1946 in the city of Leeuwarden in Friesland, the Netherlands. Gilfillan-Weidema described, as a warm, courageous and resourceful person by colleagues was a well-known fighter for the legal rights of landless people in South Africa.

In 1953, the Weidema family moved to Vryburg (now Huhudi) in the North West Province where she grew up and schooled. She obtained a BA (nursing) degree from the University of Pretoria in 1968 and a diploma in midwifery at Queen Victoria Hospital in Johannesburg the following year.

Weidema married Chris Gilfillan in November 1969.  Thereafter she worked as a pathologist in Pretoria. They had two sons, Henry and Charles. While she was at home, looking after the children, Gilfillan-Weidema studied history. During the eighties, she and her husband were active against repression.   Gilfillan-Weidema joined the Black Sash, a move that led directly to her interest in law. The partnership between Weidema and Gilfillan enabled her to take up a new career.

She obtained her LLB from the University of South Africa in 1990 and proceeded to join the Pretoria office of the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) as an attorney from 1992 to 1997. During this time at LRC, she wrote her dissertation on "common-law and customary land rights in the context of section 28 of the Constitution," in fulfilment of the requirements of her Masters degree in Law, which she obtained in 1995.

From 1997 to 2000, Durkje served as a regional Land Claims Commissioner for the Limpopo and Mpumalanga Provinces. She rejoined the LRC once again in 2000, this time at the Johannesburg offices and was Regional Director from 2001 to 2004. Her work at the LRC was focused on restitution, land reform and development, and assisting occupants of the 'informal settlements,' defending people from illegal evictions and assisting them to access social housing projects.

In land reform, Gilfillan-Weidema saw tenure reform underpinning stable, durable development projects in rural areas. She got to know intimately the communities on whose behalf she worked, many of them in remote, hard-to-reach corners of Mpumalanga and Limpopo.

She played a key role in exposing and overturning the Communal Land Rights Act. The Act was introduced by Thabo Mbeki's government as part of a pre-election deal to secure the support of traditional leaders before the 2004 election.

The act placed substantial control over land that had been claimed in the restitution process in the hands of unelected chiefs. Communities that had won back land which had been taken from them under apartheid, stood to lose it all over again as the act gave control of the land to traditional leaders who were not bound by any obligations to act democratically. For instance, Gilfillan-Weidema represented the Dixie and Kalkfontein communities in Mpumalanga and Limpopo respectively. With her help, they won protracted legal cases, forcing the chiefs to abandon their claims to the land. Proponents of the law continued attempting to have legislation enacted, but the legislation was finally overturned by the Constitutional Court in May 2010.

Gilfillan-Weidema was also involved in getting land rights in the Kruger National Park restored to the Makuleke community. They were forced off the land, which had been theirs since the early 1800s, at gunpoint in 1969 and dumped on a much smaller piece of land in the Gazankulu homeland.

They eventually won title to their old land in the Kruger National Park provided they used it for ecotourism. They now have a share in a number of luxury game lodges on the land. This case paved the way for the resolution of similar cases involving land which had become a national resource. Policy for dealing with such claims is based largely on the Makuleke model.

She joined the Legal Resources Centre in Pretoria before being made Land Commissioner by Derek Hanekom, who was Land Affairs Minister at the time. His successor, Thoko Didiza, would not renew Gilfillan-Weidema's contract - in the interests, ironically, of transformation - and she went back to the LRC.

In 2008, Gilfillan-Weidema increasingly began to operate from Pretoria, establishing a partnership with another lawyer who had worked in the LRC's Pretoria's office prior to its closure. The firm Gilfillan du Plesis was established and continued to pursue a path of public interest law, often in cooperation with the LRC.

During her last days, from her sick bed, Durkje still thought about her cases and gave her family instructions to pass on to her firm.

Durkje Gilfillan-Weidema, 64, died in Pretoria on 5 April 2011. She is survived by her husband Chris Gilfillan, her sons Henry and Charles; and her granddaughters Meagan and Grace.

References

• Barron, C (2011), Obituaries: Durkje Gilfillan-Weidema: Dogged fighter for the landless from Timeslive, 17 April,  [online], Available at  www.timeslive.co.za [Accessed 22 June 2011]
• Anon, (2011), Obituary: Durkje Gilfillan-Weidema from Legal Resources Centre, 13 April, [online] Available at www.lrc.org.za [Accessed 22 June 2011]
• Anon, (2010), Communal Lands Right Act: Constitutional Court judgment; Land Rights Management Facility: Departmental briefings, from the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, 8 September, [online] Available at www.pmg.org.za [Accessed 1 July 2011]
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