Richard Feetham

Richard Feetham CMG (1874-1965) was a lawyer, politician and judge in South Africa. He was also the chairman of a number of high-profile international and domestic commissions.

Feetham was born in Penrhos, Monmouthshire, the fifth son of the Reverend William and Mary Feetham; he was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford. He read law in Lincolns Inn and was called to the Bar in 1899. He served with the Inns of Court Rifles in the Second Boer War. He was one of the young lawyers selected by Lord Milner to assist him in a policy of reconstruction following the Treaty of Vereeniging, who became known as "Milner's Kindergarten".

Feetham became deputy town clerk of Johannesburg in 1902 and town clerk the following year. In April 1905, he resigned from the Town Council and joined the South African Bar.

Feetham was, apart from other work as a commissioner, also appointed "to enquire into and report upon the facts relating to the tenure by natives of their lots in the Potchefstroom native location" and after he completed this work, its findings were reported in 1906 by the Government Printer, Pretoria. This commission's work was undertaken because of the claims of the residents of the old native location that members of the Town Council (Stadsraad) in 1888 gave them verbal assurances of a perpetual right of occupation of their stands as long as they paid their annual rent.

He was legal adviser to Lord Selborne, the High Commissioner in 1907 and a member of the Legislative Council of the Transvaal from (1907-1910). In 1915 he was elected to the House of Assembly of South Africa for the Parktown constituency in Johannesburg. During World War I, Feetham was an officer in the South African Cape Corps and served in East Africa and Egypt.

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