Adv Neville Melville

A passionate and involved South African, and former Banking Ombudsman (from 2000 to 2007), Advocate Neville Melville was involved with criminal law on both sides of the fence (prosecuting and defending) during the turbulent 1980s and knows only too well the effects of war and political violence.

In the early 1990s he was involved in the National Peace Accord as Police Reporting Officer. Over the 1994-election period Neville was actively involved in various trouble spots as a representative of the Transitional Executive Council and was an accredited election monitor. He played a role in ensuring a peaceful transition to democracy in the 'killing fields' of Natal; oversaw the investigation of allegations of serious abuses by apartheid police and was instrumental in closing down the operations of a KwaZulu police hit squad (the instigator was later granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission). From this involvement flowed his appointment, as part of former president Nelson Mandela's administration, as the national ombudsman for complaints against the police force that had earned international notoriety during the apartheid era.

Neville served on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal, Crime and Conflict, published by the Vera Institute of Justice in New York, and was a member of the Working Group on Police Accountability and Public Safety in Democratic Societies. He is the author of The Taming of the Blue: Regulating Police Misconduct in South Africa, The Banking Adjudicator's Handbook. His most recent work is The Christian's Voyage published by Book of Life Publishers.

Neville has a Master's Degree in Constitutional Law (cum laude) and has presented his experiences at various international conferences. He is a member and co-founder of Friends of Mamelodi, a community outreach organisation which concentrates on fundraising, work creation and facilitating a feeding scheme.

In 2007 Neville formed Onlineombud, a dispute-handling and arbitration service. In 2010 he founded Madeasy ... and published his book The Consumer Protection Act Made Easy.