Navi Pillay, Nobel laureate: the bus driver's daughter from Durban
Her community paid for her to study law. Her biographer describes the grit behind South Africa's newest Nobel Peace Prize winner.
Durban — When Navi Pillay was awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize for a lifetime's work in international law and justice, few were more pleased than Sam Naidu, a literary scholar who wrote her biography. Naidu shared her memories with The Conversation.
Clairwood beginnings
Navanethem Pillay was born in 1941 into a working-class family in Clairwood, Durban, the fifth of eight children. Her grandparents had come from India as indentured labourers in the late 19th century to work on the sugarcane fields of what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Her father was a bus driver who earned extra money fishing.
Education mattered in the Pillay home. Under apartheid, black South Africans were given few chances, but her school principal saw her ability and her community raised money so she could study law. She went on to a master's degree and a doctorate in juridical science at Harvard.
A pioneer
In 1967 she became the first black woman in South Africa to open her own law practice. One of her early cases was the defence of Phyllis Naidoo, an ANC member living under banning orders.
The woman behind the prize
Naidu, who interviewed Pillay in Geneva in 2009 and was given access to her personal archive, describes her as down to earth, generous with her time and blessed with a wicked sense of humour. On meeting the young author, Pillay joked that she had been expecting someone as old as herself. Beneath the warmth, Naidu says, lies a steely grit that no obstacle to justice can quell, and that has only grown stronger with time.
Source: The Conversation, 12 October 2026.
