The Future Of The Institution Of Hereditary Rule And Customary Law In South Africa

A groundbreaking new study of the ways in which South African leaders struggle to legitimize themselves through the costuming of political power. Indirect rule -- the British colonial policy of employing indigenous tribal chiefs as political intermediaries -- has typically been understood by scholars as little more than an expedient solution to imperial personnel shortages.A reexamination of the history of indirect rule in South Africa reveals it to have been much more: an ideological strategy designed to win legitimacy for colonial officials. Indirect rule became the basic template from which segregation and apartheid emerged during the twentieth century and set the stage for a post-apartheid debate over African political identity and "traditional authority" that continues to shape South African politics today. This new study, based on firsthand field research and archival material only recently made available to scholars, unveils the inner workings of South African segregation. Drawing influence from a range of political theorists including Machiavelli, Marx, Weber, Althusser, and Zizek, Myers develops a groundbreaking understanding of the ways in which leaders struggle to legitimize themselves through the costuming of political power. J. C. Myers is Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Stanislaus.

This insightful Research Handbook provides a definitive overview of the New Legal Realism (NLR) movement, reaching beyond historical and national boundaries to form new conversations. Drawing on deep roots within the law-and-society tradition, it demonstrates the powerful virtues of new legal realist research and its attention to the challenges of translation between social science and law. It explores an impressive range of contemporary issues including immigration, policing, globalization, legal education, and access to justice, concluding with and examination of how different social science disciplines intersect with NLR.

"Omudile muua ohapo; epangelo liua ohamba". Freely translated, this proverb of the Ovakwanyama of northern Namibia means: "New leaves produce a good shade; the laws of a king are always as good as new". The proverb paints a picture of wisdom to express the dialectical relationship between continuity and change in customary law. Since royal orders are supposed not to change from one king to the next, they are always as good as new, reads the explanatory note to the proverb by the anthropologist Loeb, who recorded the proverb. Traditional authority is like a tree standing on its roots, rooted in the tradition created by the ancestors of the ruler and the community. These roots remain firm, stable and unchanged, not so the concrete manifestation of authority that changes and responds to changes of the environment. This makes that new leaves are produced by the rooted tree. The new leaves are new and old. They are old, because in structure, colour and their capacity to protect by giving shade, they are more or less like the leaves of last year and the year before; they are new because they react to the challenge of seasons. The Shade of New Leaves emerged out of an international conference on the living reality of customary law and traditional governance held in Windhoek in 2004. The conference was organised by the Centre for Applied Social Sciences and the Human Rights and Documentation Centre, both affiliated to the Faculty of Law of the University of Namibia, in co-operation with the Law Departments of the Universities of Bremen, Germany, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. The contributions to this book are grouped into six parts: Part 1: Legal pluralism, traditional governance and the challenge of the democratic constitutional order * Part 2: Traditional administration of justice revisited * Part 3: Ascertaining customary law: prerequisite of good governance in traditional authority * Part 4: Legal philosophy, African philosophy and African jurisprudence * Part 5: Research, training and teaching of customary law * Part 6: Afterthoughts

This book examines the ongoing resurgence of traditional power structures in South Africa. Oomen assesses the relation between the changing legal and socio-political position of traditional authority and customary law and what these changes can teach us about the interrelation between law, politics, and culture in the post-modern world.

Providing insight into South African values and culture, this book is a comprehensive study of the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa (Contralesa) and its role in history. Essentially, it examines the Contralesa’s position during the Mass Democratic Movement’s struggles in the late 1980s—when liberation movements were unbanned and their leaders were released from jail—as well as during the post-1994 era of Nelson Mandela. A valuable resource, this reference will captivate those interested in the issue of governance, institutional change, and the interface between designed modernity and surviving traditions.

This book makes life unusually easy for anyone who wants to know about African indigenous laws, and seeks to encourage further research into the laws that regulate the lives of millions of Africans. For, in spite of colonialism, military decrees and the authoritative modernity of state civil or common law, African indigenous laws have not fallen into abeyance. African indigenous laws, like Roman law before Justinian codification, was mos maiorum, the path of the ancestors. Accordingly, Roman law, English common law and African indigenous law are the great legal creation of pagan human beings whereas other ancient systems of laws such as Judaism, Sharia, Hindu, Adat laws, were religious in origin. The Bibliography ranges widely over topics as diverse as cultural property, coups d'etat and the plunder of antiquities, to formalities of marriage, child betrothal, divorce, sororate marriage, levirate marriage, to succession and inheritance, oral will, and administration of the estate. A word of warning to all those who normally skip reading Prefaces: the two here, one by Professor Antony Allott, the other by Professor Manfred Hinz, are essential reading. And as Professor Hinz writes: this bibliography 'is an indispensable tool for all who are in one way or the other concerned with customary law, as lecturer, researcher, law applier and law reformer....' This unusual bibliography crosses boundaries of countries and disciplines. It will be an invaluable aid to many different lines of research.