Bience Philomina Gawanas (born 1956) is a Namibian lawyer. She was appointed in January 2018 as Special Adviser on Africa for the United Nations after having served as Commissioner for Social Affairs at the African Union Assembly of Heads of State and Government, from 2002 to 2012. She was a Commissioner on the Public Service Commission in Namibia from 1991 to 1996, and an Ombudswoman in the Namibian Government from 1996 to 2003. She has also been a lecturer in Gender Law at the University of Namibia, Director of the Board of the Central Bank of Namibia, and involved in many non-governmental organizations including Secretary-General of the Namibian National Women's Organization and patron of Namibian Federation of Persons with Disabilities. As Chairperson of the Law Reform Commission she oversaw the passage of the Married Persons' Equality Act. The commission also did extensive work on Rape Acts and other important laws that were eventually passed after her time. Early life and education Bience is the daughter of Philemon Gawanab and Hilde Rheiss. She attended secondary school at St Theresa Catholic school in Tses, ǁKaras Region, southern Namibia. From Tses she went to University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa, to study law; Catholic sponsors helped her resist the pressure of apartheid officials to switch careers from law to nursing. She was expelled from UWC after the Soweto uprisings in 1976. After her expulsion she became an active member of SWAPO Youth League in Namibia and a teacher. She went into exile and lived in Zambia, Angola and Cuba. In 1981 the International Labour Organization sponsored her as an intern at their headquarters and subsequently on a labour law study. After this Africa Educational Trust sponsored her through a law degree at University of Warwick, UK. She graduated in 1987 and qualified as a barrister at Lincoln's Inn, London in 1988. Namibia was occupied illegally by South Africa until 1990. "When I decided to study law, a white schools inspector told me that as a black child my intelligence was lower than that of a white child and that maybe law was not meant for me," she said to one interviewer. "Today I am a lawyer and I have proved that intelligence has got nothing to do with a person's colour." Gawanas's interest in law was sparked after her beloved elder brother Jeka was picked up by whites