Coca-Cola has appointed Tamryn Sass, a litigation, employment, and governance lawyer, as its director and legal counsel for compliance and employment in Africa. Sass previously served as general counsel for the Nelson Mandela Foundation and held a senior compliance role at the City of Cape Town.
Sass, based in Johannesburg, is a litigation, employment, and governance lawyer who began her career with Smith Tabata Attorneys in the Eastern Cape. She rose to be the firm’s head of commercial litigation and labour law.
Since 2015, Sass has held in-house roles, including nearly seven years with the City of Cape Town, where she was head of compliance and probity. She then spent four years with the Nelson Mandela Foundation, overseeing governance, legal strategies, and managing risk and intellectual property mandates.
Sass’s appointment follows the hire of Ntswaki Kutumela, a lawyer with extensive experience in the drinks and consumer goods industries, as Unilever’s general counsel for Africa. In a LinkedIn post, Sass wrote that her new role brings together areas that have shaped her career, including legal counsel, compliance, ethics, employment law, and governance.
The African Corporate & Government Counsel Forum and Afriwise published a report last year warning that regulatory changes and inconsistency pose challenges to in-house counsel in Africa. Recent commentary has highlighted how these challenges have led to greater innovation among Africa’s general counsel, with some executives taking on new roles, such as the executive counsel for Africa at GE Vernova, who was appointed as the new chair of the advisory board at the African Corporate & Government Counsel Forum.