Constitution Hill Johannesburg: From Prison Complex to Constitutional Court

On a ridge above Braamfontein, at the edge of Johannesburg’s inner city, stands a group of buildings that spans almost the whole of the city’s history. There is a nineteenth-century fort with grassed ramparts, a cramped prison block where Black men were held for most of the twentieth century, a red-brick gaol for women, and, rising among them, the light-filled building of South Africa’s Constitutional Court. Constitution Hill in Johannesburg is the place where the country chose to put its highest court on human rights on the site of one of its most notorious prisons. On Day 7 of our Southern Africa Tour, the group’s half-day Johannesburg city tour includes a visit to Constitution Hill.

A fort on the ridge

Johannesburg was barely six years old when the hill was chosen for a prison. Gold had been found on the Witwatersrand in 1886, and the mining camp grew at astonishing speed. In 1892–93 a prison for white male prisoners was built on the ridge. A few years later, between 1896 and 1899, the government of Paul Kruger’s South African Republic (the ZAR) built a fort around it, with earth ramparts from which soldiers could watch over the town and defend the republic against a British invasion.

The invasion came, but not as a siege of the Fort. In 1900, during the South African War, British forces occupied Johannesburg and the Fort passed into their hands. They used it to hold Boer prisoners, and some prisoners held here were executed. When the war ended, the Fort settled into its long career as a prison. Under apartheid it was a prison for white men only, with one exception, which we will come to.

Number Four: the prison for Black men

In 1902 the authorities added a new section for Black prisoners, officially the “native” gaol, which became known as Number Four. It held men for more than 80 years, and it is the part of the complex that former prisoners describe in the harshest terms. On average around 2,000 prisoners were held here at a time, sharing just 12 toilets and eight showers. Many had committed no crime beyond breaking the pass laws, which controlled where Black South Africans could live and work. Striking mineworkers and political dissidents were held here too.

Former prisoners remember the routines as much as the cells. Prisoners were made to strip and perform a humiliating search known as the tauza, and the isolation cells were called ekhulukhuthu, the deep hole. Walking through its yards and communal cells today is the most sobering part of any visit.

Number Four also held some of the most famous names in South African history. Robert Sobukwe, the founding leader of the Pan Africanist Congress, was held here. So, after the 1914 Rebellion, was the Boer general Christiaan de Wet. And in January 1908, a young Indian lawyer named Mohandas Gandhi, then leading the campaign of passive resistance against the registration law for Indians in the Transvaal, served his first prison sentence at the Fort, in the section for prisoners who were not white. He had been sentenced to two months, and was released after about three weeks when a compromise was reached with the government.

The Women’s Gaol

A separate gaol for women followed, completed in 1909 in a Victorian style. It held women of all races, from ordinary offenders to political prisoners. Among them were Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Albertina Sisulu and the scholar and activist Fatima Meer, each held for their opposition to apartheid. Today the building houses offices and exhibitions, including the base of the Constitution Hill Trust, and its quieter scale makes a strong contrast with Number Four across the precinct.

Mandela and the Old Fort

Nelson Mandela passed through the complex twice. In December 1956, he was among the 156 people arrested in the run-up to the Treason Trial, and spent around two weeks in the Awaiting Trial Block. In August 1962, after his arrest near Howick, he was held for a few weeks in the hospital section of the Old Fort, the one exception to its whites-only rule. Other political prisoners held at Constitution Hill at various times included Albert Luthuli and Joe Slovo, and after the Soweto uprising of 1976, students who had taken part were brought here too.

The prison closed in 1983, and the ridge was later chosen as the home of the new Constitutional Court.

A new court for a new constitution

The Constitutional Court was created under the interim Constitution of 1993, which governed the transition to democracy, and it first sat in February 1995, in rented office space in Braamfontein. One of its earliest and most important judgments came within months: in S v Makwanyane, decided on 6 June 1995, the court ruled the death penalty unconstitutional.

The court also had a unique role in making the final Constitution. The Constitutional Assembly completed its text in May 1996, but before it could take effect, the court had to certify that it met a set of agreed principles. In September 1996 the court declined to certify the first text, the assembly amended it, and the court certified the revised version on 4 December 1996. Nelson Mandela signed the Constitution at Sharpeville on 10 December 1996, and it came into force on 4 February 1997. Our article on the Freedom Charter in Kliptown traces some of its language back to 1955.

Building justice on the site of a prison

The court’s first judges deliberately chose the Old Fort site for its new home, precisely because of its history. An international architectural competition in 1997, judged by a panel chaired by the Indian architect Charles Correa, was won by OMM Design Workshop of Durban, working with Urban Solutions of Johannesburg. Their concept was justice under a tree: the idea, drawn from village life across Africa, of people gathering in the shade of a tree to settle disputes. In the foyer, slender columns set at angles stand in for tree trunks, and the ceiling suggests dappled light through leaves.

The past is built into the fabric of the court. The Awaiting Trial Block, built in 1928, was demolished to make way for it, and its bricks were reused, around 150,000 of them, in the walls of the court chamber and in the Great African Steps that run across the site; four of its old stairwells were kept standing. In the chamber, a low ribbon of glass runs along the base of the walls, a deliberate gesture towards openness. The great front doors are carved with 27 rights from the Bill of Rights, one for each year Mandela spent in prison, and the words “Constitutional Court” appear on the façade in all 11 of South Africa’s official languages. President Thabo Mbeki opened the building on Human Rights Day, 21 March 2004.

Details to look for in the court

The building rewards a slow look. Overhead in the foyer, the words human dignity, equality and freedom, the founding values of the Constitution, are written on the roof beams in the handwriting of each of the judges who served on the court when it opened. Outside, the name of the court is written on the façade in all eleven official languages.

Prison bricks from the Awaiting Trial Block went into the Great African Steps as well as the court, and the block’s four surviving stairwells still stand on the site. The precinct is also home to the Flame of Democracy, lit on 10 December 2011 to mark fifteen years since the signing of the Constitution. Together they turn the site into something more than a court building: a public space where the story of the place is laid out for anyone who walks through.

An art collection that started with no budget

Visitors are often surprised by how much art there is in the building. The collection began in 1994, before the court even had a permanent home, when Justices Albie Sachs and Yvonne Mokgoro took charge of it with a budget of just R10,000, relying largely on donations from artists. Its first commission was a tapestry called Humanity by Joseph Ndlovu. Today the collection holds more than 800 works by around 400 artists, many of them about rights, memory and South African life, displayed in the public spaces of the court.

Can visitors go inside the Constitutional Court?

Yes. Entry to the court building and to the ramparts of the Old Fort is free, and when the court is in session, members of the public can watch hearings from the visitor galleries. The exhibitions in the Old Fort, Number Four and the Women’s Gaol charge an entry fee that includes a guided tour. Exactly which parts of the precinct the group sees on Day 7 depends on the timing of the city tour, so your Tour Leader will confirm on the day.

How much walking is involved at Constitution Hill?

A moderate amount. The precinct is spread across a ridge, with paths and steps between the Old Fort, Number Four, the Women’s Gaol and the court, and some ground is uneven. The Constitution Hill visit is one stop on a half-day city tour that also takes in Hillbrow, Newtown and the Carlton Centre, so it is not a long day on your feet. The tour as a whole is rated Level 2 (Moderate), which means managing three to five hours of activity a day and walking up to eight kilometres on uneven ground.

Is Constitution Hill a World Heritage Site?

Yes, as part of a larger group. In July 2024 Constitution Hill was inscribed by UNESCO as one of 14 sites making up the World Heritage listing called Human Rights, Liberation and Reconciliation: Nelson Mandela Legacy Sites. The listing recognises the role these places played in the struggle against apartheid and the transition to democracy.

Constitution Hill on the Southern Africa route

Day 7 is the group’s first day in Johannesburg, after travelling north from the Garden Route. The half-day city tour runs from the northern suburbs of Sandton and Houghton, past Nelson Mandela’s former home, through Hillbrow and Braamfontein to Constitution Hill, and on to Newtown, Main Street and the viewing deck of the Carlton Centre. For more on the city itself, see our introduction to Johannesburg.

The next day brings a very different monument. In Pretoria, the group visits the Voortrekker Monument, completed in 1949 to commemorate the Great Trek and closely tied to the rise of Afrikaner nationalism. Seen a day apart, the two sites make a powerful pair: one built to celebrate a single people’s story, the other designed to house a court for everyone. At the end of the journey, on Day 18, the group goes to Soweto and to Kliptown, where the Freedom Charter was adopted in 1955.

Our overview of the Southern Africa cultural journey shows how these sites fit into the route from Cape Town to Soweto. Of all of them, Constitution Hill may be the one that says most in the least space. Standing in the court’s foyer, under its canopy of angled columns, with the old prison blocks a short walk away, you can see in a single glance where South Africa has come from and what it set out to become. In 2026, the Constitution this court certified turns thirty.