Silindile Buthelezi is a doctoral (J.S.D.) candidate at Stanford Law School. Her primary area of research, and teaching, is Banking and Finance Law (specifically Financial Regulation & Institutions). She has presented her research at various academic conferences in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States (US). In 2018, Silindile also served on the Independent Expert Panel that was established by the National Treasury of South Africa to comment on the Conduct of Financial Institutions (COFI) Bill – the proposed consumer protection legislation that will form part of South Africa’s twin peaks financial regulatory reforms.

Prior to her arrival at Stanford, Silindile was employed as a lecturer in the Commercial Law Department at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She taught Banking Law, a final year research seminar elective that she developed and convened. She also taught Commercial Transactions Law (both at LLB and LLM level), and Business Law. During her time as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, she supervised two LLM students’ dissertations to completion. Silindile holds a Bachelor of Laws (L.L.B.) and a Master of Laws (L.L.M. in Business Law) from the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. She also holds a Master of Laws (L.L.M. in International Banking and Finance Law) from University College London, United Kingdom, where she graduated with Merit. She also holds a Master of the Science of Law (J.S.M.) from Stanford Law School.

Silindile completed her articles of clerkship at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr (formerly a member of the DLA Piper group), one of the leading corporate and commercial law firms in South Africa. She was admitted as an attorney in the High Court of South Africa in 2012. She then gained judicial clerkship experience by working as a Law Researcher at the Western Cape High Court prior to joining the Law Faculty at the University of Cape Town. In 2017, Silindile was selected as a Mandela Washington Fellow for Young African Leaders (YALI) and spent 6 weeks in the USA studying Public Management and Policy at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies (AYSPS) at Georgia State University. She was also selected as one (1) of the 2017 Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South Africans under the ‘Justice and Law’ category.

Bar Admission

Admitted Attorney of the High Court of South Africa (3 February 2012)

Description of Dissertation

Her doctoral research seeks to investigate various policy implementation strategies, and their potential implications, that South Africa can adopt as it reforms its financial sector regulatory framework to Australia’s twin peaks model. The focus will be centered on addressing consumer protection issues within South Africa’s financial sector. This research will be explored within the context of different theoretical perspectives on policy implementation, organization, and governance. Silindile’s research further develops her prior research on the topic that she conducted during her LLM and JSM studies. Her LLM research investigated the United Kingdom’s (UK) motivation for its financial sector regulatory reforms to Australia’s twin peaks model, and highlighted the key lessons that South Africa could draw from the UK reforms as it considered its own regulatory overhaul. Silindile then developed her LLM research further and her JSM thesis then investigated South Africa’s motivation to reform to Australia’s twin peaks model, and specifically explored whether such reforms can be considered a sound policy decision given South Africa’s unique economic context. This question was explored within the legal transplants theoretical framework.