Legal History and Historiography in Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Waller
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Court Records ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
Judicial Procedures ◽  
Criminal Matters

Increasingly, the study of law in colonial Africa has moved out of the domain of legal scholarship per se, where it had its origins in the 1940s, and into that of social and cultural history; it has also shifted from a rules-based approach, primarily concerned with legal codes and judicial institutions, to one that focuses on process and explores the complex relationship between law and culture. As the field has expanded, it has divided into sub-branches. Some remain within the scope of legal history, defined as the study of how legal codes and judicial procedures have developed and changed and of the issues of principle that arose; others are more concerned with the social impact of law, how the establishment of colonial legal regimes, including customary law and the courts where cases could be heard, presented new dilemmas and opportunities and altered the distribution of power in African communities. Beyond this, historians have also used legal records, especially court records, as social documents without being directly concerned with their particular legal and judicial contexts. Once their limitations and the difficulties of interpretation that they present have been understood, such records offer potentially rich insights into family and household affairs as well as into more obviously civil or criminal matters.

scholarly journals Normative intersectionality in married women's property rights in southern Nigeria

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony C Diala ◽  
Jane C Diala
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Socioeconomic Changes ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Southern Nigeria ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

ABSTRACT The fate of marriage gifts during a customary law divorce is significant for the interaction of legal orders in sub-Saharan Africa, especially in the context of scholars' fixation with conflict of laws. In analysing this fatet, this article introduces normative intersectionality as a theoretical framework for a nuanced understanding of how laws and socio-economic forces interact in post-colonial settings. Normative intersectionality rejects a legal positivist view of rights, which neglects people's adaptation of indigenous norms to socioeconomic changes. In this sense, normative intersectionality is useful for addressing the traditional Igbo law of matrimonial property, which regards a married woman's property rights as subsumed in her husband's rights. Using the division of marriage gifts in Southern Nigeria as a case study, the article draws attention to how legal orders speak to, rather than against, each other, and in so doing, stresses the adaptive character of indigenous laws. It argues that normative intersectionality illumines the interplay of gender equality, property rights and legal pluralism. Accordingly, it urges judges to use the imitative nature of legal pluralism in post-colonial settings to remedy entrenched systems of injustice and inequality, which often hide under the banner of tradition. Keywords: Adaptive legal pluralism, marriage gifts, African customary law, matrimonial property rights.

scholarly journals HIV-Associated Tuberculosis in the Newborn and Young Infant

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-10 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Adhikari ◽  
P. Jeena ◽  
R. Bobat ◽  
M. Archary ◽  
K. Naidoo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Vertical Transmission ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Transmission Rate ◽  
Young Infant ◽  
Perinatal Outcomes ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Resource Limited ◽  
Vertical Transmission Rate ◽  
Sub Saharan

Each year, approximately 250 000 women die during pregnancy, delivery, or postpartum. Maternal mortality rates due to tuberculosis (TB) and HIV in Sub-Saharan Africa now supersede obstetric-related causes of mortality. The majority of cases occur in population-dense regions of Africa and Asia where TB is endemic. The vertical transmission rate of tuberculosis is 15%, the overall vertical transmission rate of HIV in resource-limited settings with mono- or dual-ARV therapy varies from 1.9% to 10.7%. If the millennium development goals are to be achieved, both HIV and TB must be prevented. The essential aspect of TB prevention and detection in the newborn is the maternal history and a positive HIV status in the mother. Perinatal outcomes are guarded even with treatment of both diseases. Exclusive breast feeding is recommended. The community and social impact are crippling. The social issues aggravate the prognosis of these two diseases.

Comparative Law and African Customary Law

2006 ◽  
pp. 640-674 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. W. Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Oral Tradition ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Family ◽  
International Diplomacy ◽  
Customary Laws ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Normative Order

Customary law grows out of the social practices which a given jural community has come to accept as obligatory. It is a pervasive normative order, providing the regulatory framework for spheres of human activity as diverse as the family, the neighbourhood, the business of merchant banking, or international diplomacy. This article looks at the customary laws of sub-Saharan Africa. It deals with the preservation of the law in an oral tradition and how it has been influenced by certain social, economic, and political structures. This focus requires, in turn, that particular attention be paid to factors influencing the production of texts on customary law. Because information on the subject is limited, outdated, and somewhat subjective, readers must be made aware of how changes in the theories of jurisprudence and anthropology have affected ideas and preconceptions.

scholarly journals Legal Pluralism, Customary Law and Human Rights in Francophone African Countries

2009 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 149 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacques Frémont
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Pluralism ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Sub Saharan

This article provides a perspective on human rights in sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on states colonised and influenced by the continental cultures of France and Belgium.  The author examines what the Pacific can gain from the Francophone countries' understanding of human rights, with insights into the interface of cultures in post-colonial statehood.  The article is one of four background papers which provide paradigms and challenges for a possible Pacific charter.

scholarly journals Media framing of democratisation conflicts in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa

Sociologija ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-537
Author(s):  
Nebojsa Vladisavljevic ◽  
Katrin Voltmer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Media Framing ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Media ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Distribution Of Power

This paper presents an overview of the main findings from a quantitative content analysis covering different types of democratisation conflicts (i.e., conflicts over citizenship, elections, transitional justice and distribution of power) in Egypt, Kenya, Serbia and South Africa. The key findings from the content analysis are organised around several themes: causes of democratisation conflicts, portrayal of conflict parties, preferred solutions to conflicts, perceptions of democracy, role of the media, authoritarian past, and tone of reporting and polarisation. The main finding is that cross-national variations depend on several factors: specific country contexts (and contexts of broader regions from which they come from, including the Arab Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and post-communist Europe); regime type and the stage of democratisation; and type of democratisation conflict (which reflects the main arenas of political contestation). Across all countries, the quality of media coverage is limited by bias, emotionalisation and - most importantly - polarisation. In particular, conflicts over the distribution of power trigger sharp polarisation, whereas elections - contrary to existing literature - seem to force media towards a more restrained style of reporting. The sample involves 5162 newspaper articles and news stories from the four countries.

The Social Impact of AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa

1990 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Etienne van de Walle
Keyword(s):  
Social Impact ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sub Saharan

The Law and Land Grabbing: Friend or Foe?

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liz Alden Wily
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Land Rights ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Land Acquisitions ◽  
Customary Rights ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Large Scale Land ◽  
Customary Land

AbstractThis paper reflects upon the role of law in the contemporary surge in global large-scale land acquisitions. Its point of reference is the land security of several billion rural poor who traditionally own and use untitled lands that are classified as state lands or unowned public lands in national laws. Most of the affected lands are off-farm areas including forests, marshlands, and rangelands. Investors target these lands in belief they are unowned. Governments concur, selling or leasing these lands on grounds of being technically the lawful owner and despite awareness that these lands are occupied and used. Despite the longstanding nature of such conflicts as well known and long debated, the present land rush brings unresolved contradictions between statutory and customary law and associated meanings of property firmly to the fore. Using Sub-Saharan Africa as the example, this paper examines the legal effects. It is shown that while millions of local land rights are threatened, the land rush also vitalises demands for improved national law status for unregistered customary rights, including those such as forest and rangelands purposely held by communities in common. To this extent, the contemporary rush could prove as much legal friend as foe to majority land rights in agrarian economies. This is partly because the current rush, unlike those that have gone before it, occurs in an environment of advanced popular communication, emergent mass empowerment, and has the advantage of a pre-rush era of legal improvement in the handling of indigenous and customary land rights that has established alternative precedents. Opportunities to coerce modification of classical dispossessory paths of economic growth strongly exist. Global advocacy for secure community land rights is rapidly advancing.

scholarly journals On the Repugnance of Customary Law

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 508-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Demian
Keyword(s):  
Case Law ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Aesthetic Evaluation ◽  
Colonial Era ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Aesthetic Sense ◽  
History Of ◽  
Sub Saharan

AbstractThe Constitution of Papua New Guinea (PNG) features a peculiar artifact of colonial-era law known as a repugnancy clause. This type of clause, used elsewhere as a neutral mechanism to identify conflicts between legal provisions, has in PNG become a tool for the moral-aesthetic evaluation of “customary law.” In this article, I follow the history of the PNG repugnancy clause from its colonial origins and through the relevant case law since the country's independence in order to ask both how the clause acquired its non-legal meaning through legal usage, and why it has been retained in its original form in PNG when so many postcolonial legal regimes have discarded it. Comparative material from Indonesia, sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Australia is used to contextualize the durability of the PNG repugnancy clause, and theoretical material on the affect of disgust and shame is brought to bear in order to understand the use of repugnancy in its moral-aesthetic sense. The article concludes with a meditation on the way the repugnancy clause has enabled the judiciary of PNG to distance the law of the country not simply from an uneducated or inadequately Christian general populace, but also from a history in which all Papua New Guineans were regarded as a contaminating threat to the European colonizers whose legal system the country has inherited.

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