scholarly journals From Customary Law to Popular Justice

1984 ◽  
Vol 28 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 90-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Keyword(s):  
Customary Law ◽  
Popular Justice ◽  
African Context ◽  
Political Realities

The Portuguese-speaking countries represent rather varied socio-political realities and are going through very different internal developments. They share, however, some fundamental similarities within the contemporary African context. I will distinguish two characteristics of particular significance for the topic I propose to treat here.

Changing the Courts in Zimbabwe: The Customary Law and Primary Courts Act

1982 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Ladley
Keyword(s):  
Early Life ◽  
Field Research ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Popular Justice ◽  
Customary Court

In February, 1981, the Customary Law and Primary Courts Bill was “celebrated” into law by the Parliament of Zimbabwe. It was swept into being with the reforming fervour which the new government brought to an independent Zimbabwe. The debating chambers, and loudspeakers at country-wide mass rallies, echoed with condemnations of the previous customary court structures and with the promise of popular justice and people's courts. Whether the legislation was “revolutionary” is arguable, but the atmosphere of its birth is an important indicator of its nature—a people's government was providing for a people's law. This article is mainly concerned with the changes in court structure and jurisdiction brought about by the Customary Law and Primary Courts Act. However, some observations on the early life of the primary courts, and on other matters of law reform in Zimbabwe, are necessary in order to breathe life into the legislative discussion. Many of these observations are personal—gleaned from field research into the primary courts in Zimbabwe between April, 1982, and February, 1983.

scholarly journals The indigenisation of customary law: Creating an indigenous legal pluralism within the South African dispensation: possible or not?

De Jure ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ntebo L Morudu ◽  
Charles Maimela
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Current Status ◽  
The South ◽  
Indigenous Law ◽  
Foreign Countries ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
African Context

The article examines the possibility of creating an indigenous legal pluralism within the South African context. Due to the historical and current marginalisation of customary law, can customary law be developed, reformed and codified? Furthermore, can the legal regimes and human rights of indigenous people of South Africa be ascertained? The article renegades the historical marginalisation of customary law due to colonialism and apartheid; where indigenous people's legal regimes were placed subordinate to common law. The article further implores the current status of indigenous law nationally and internationally. The article seeks to advance the argument based on legislative and judicial analysis, that customary law is still marginalised under the current constitutional dispensation. The international call and new recognition of customary law are commendable; the article seeks to review whether South Africa is keeping up or not to the international directives embedded within declarations and conventions they are a signatory to. The article will further comparatively analyse foreign countries that have managed to do what South Africa is struggling to achieve with regard to the recognition, development, application, and reform of customary law.

scholarly journals The Resurrection of the Indigenous Values System in Post-Apartheid African Law: South Africa’s Constitutional and Legislative Framework Revisited

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 294-312
Author(s):  
Dial Dayana Ndima
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Social Practice ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Cultural Imperialism ◽  
African Culture ◽  
State Institutions ◽  
African Worldview ◽  
Legislative Framework ◽  
African Context

A constitution that recognises customary law in South Africa must prioritise indigenous African values in order to give direction to state institutions in their quest to mainstream the African worldview in legal interpretation. Its framework must ensure that the recognition of indigenous African institutions restores their cultural meaning which must, in turn, reflect custom and social practice as the roots for anchoring African concepts to their own frame of reference. In order to reverse the effects of cultural imperialism that generated the injustices of the past South Africa’s constitutional framework must also serve as an injunction enjoining state institutions to choose the living version of African law as their point of departure whenever they respond to calls to pronounce upon issues of indigenous African jurisprudence. In the South African context this task must entail effecting a change in the role of interpretive institutions from their pre-constitutional culture of denigrating African culture under the alienating repugnancy dispensation towards refashioning African law with indigenous values as envisioned by the ethos of transformation. The extent to which the constitutional institutions can contribute towards rehabilitating African law from being the pole-cat of South African jurisprudence to a credible component of the country’s justice system is the measure of their success in this difficult and unenviable mission. A clue to accomplishing this mission could be to develop a theory of re-indigenisation as a counterweight to the distorted jurisprudence that was developed by the discredited repugnancy clause of yester-year. Such a theory would persuade legal and constitutional interpreters to mainstream the African life-world to which to anchor the rules, principles, concepts and doctrines derived from the indigenous value system.

scholarly journals Broadening the Legal Academy, the Study of Customary Law: The Case for Social-Scientific and Anthropological Perspectives

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anne Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Daily Life ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Access To Resources ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
African Context ◽  
Black Letter ◽  
State Boundaries ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
External Interventions ◽  
Global Reach

This article explores the need for a more broadly based understanding of law, especially in the context of undertaking research in customary law. It examines the limitations of doctrinal legal scholarship involving a "black letter" approach to law, and discusses why more social-scientific and anthropological approaches are crucial for understanding what customary law entails. In doing so, it highlights the specific conditions under which people, especially women, have access to resources and how this shapes their power to negotiate with one another in daily life, as well as, in a legal forum. The article argues that such a perspective is not simply necessary to comprehend customary law, but should be applied more generally. This is in order to pursue an understanding of law in all its dimensions from negotiations in daily life, to alternative dispute forums and courts, in order to analyse and address the inequalities that arise in order to promote a more inclusive, non-discriminatory environment. Such a perspective is important in an age where law has a more global reach, extending beyond state boundaries and where what is local comes together with transnational, national and regional forces to provide an understanding of how external interventions become embodied with a diverse and localised set of meanings and practices, especially in an African context, that give rise to the uneven and varying effects of globalisation.

The Role of Customary Law in Sustainable Development

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Orebech ◽  
Fred Bosselman ◽  
Jes Bjarup ◽  
David Callies ◽  
Martin Chanock ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Customary Law

Exploring recidivism in the South African context.

1998 ◽  
Author(s):  
Belinda Bedell ◽  
Nicholas Challis ◽  
Charl Cilliers ◽  
Joy Cole ◽  
Wendy Corry ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
South African Context ◽  
The South ◽  
African Context

Memories for the Return? Remembering the Nakba by the First Generation of Palestinian Refugees in Syria

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaheed Al-Hardan
Keyword(s):  
First Generation ◽  
Palestinian Refugees ◽  
Oslo Accords ◽  
Right Of Return ◽  
Palestinian Refugee ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
The Right ◽  
Political Realities ◽  
The Way

The 1948 Nakba has, in light of the 1993 Oslo Accords and Palestinian refugee activists' mobilisation around the right of return, taken on a new-found centrality and importance in Palestinian refugee communities. Closely-related to this, members of the ‘Generation of Palestine’, the only individuals who can recollect Nakba memories, have come to be seen as the guardians of memories that are eventually to reclaim the homeland. These historical, social and political realities are deeply rooted in the ways in which the few remaining members of the generation of Palestine recollect 1948. Moreover, as members of communities that were destroyed in Palestine, and whose common and temporal and spatial frameworks were non-linearly constituted anew in Syria, one of the multiples meanings of the Nakba today can be found in the way the refugee communities perceive and define this generation.

Political Realities in Vietnam

Asian Survey ◽  
1961 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-23
Author(s):  
Wesley R. Fishel
Keyword(s):  
Political Realities
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