The law relating to the adoption of children in Tanzania has, since its inception, remained obscure. It has neither received judicial interpretation comparable to other branches of family law nor has it been a subject of academic discourse. This is so despite the fact that the first adoption legislation was introduced in colonial Tanganyika as early as 1942, was repealed and re-enacted in 1953 and has remained in force ever since.

Some statistical information regarding how this legislation has been utilised by the population would assist in further elaboration of the above contention. During the first 18 years of the operation of the Ordinance, i.e. from 1944 to the end of the British colonial era in 1961, the High Court of Tanganyika, which under the Ordinance had exclusive jurisdiction to hear adoption applications, made a total of 130 adoption orders. This works out to an average of seven adoption orders per year. With regard to the cultural background of the applicants, so far as this could be ascertained, Europeans formed the majority accounting for about two thirds while members of the Asiatic communities accounted for about one third of the total number of adoption orders granted by the High Court. The number of African applicants was comparatively insignificant.

After independence, the picture changed considerably, both in terms of volume of adoption applications and the cultural background of the leading applicants.

In April, 1994, the Law Reform Commission of Tanzania (LRC) recommended, inter alia, that section 160 of the Law of Marriage Act (LMA), be repealed because it constitutes “an unnecessary encroachment [on] the sanctity of marriage and [is] contrary to the spirit of the Law of Marriage Act”. Subsection (1) of the offending section enacts a statutory presumption of marriage in favour of reputed de facto unions that have existed for a minimum of two years. Subsection (2) states that once the presumption is rebutted, the woman cohabitant and the children born of that union become legally entitled to apply to the court for economic support from the male partner. In these proceedings the court has similar jurisdiction as a divorce court, including the making of orders for the division of assets jointly acquired by the couple and the determination of who is to have custody of the children. In 1971 when section 160 was enacted, it was widely recognized that de facto unions had become a social fact which the law could not ignore. Hence, the decision to extend to these unions the same legal consequences that follow a formal dissolution of a legal marriage. However, in so doing the legislature had indirectly raised and yet left open a number of important questions that have continued to engage the minds of judges.

One of the important characteristics of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, is the prominence it gives to the constitutional protection of the rights of men, women and children who live for a larger part of their lives as families. Although there are passing references to the family, that word is not defined by the Constitution, but the absence of a definition need not be regarded as evidence of non-recognition of the concept of family in Ghana society. Few will disagree widi the proposition that the basis of every society from the most primitive to the most complicated is the family. As an institution it is of great antiquity.

The attainment of independence by Tanganyika has brought about some major changes in the legislative provisions relating to the judicial system of the territory. The most important of these are the provisions relating to the High Court, and the integration of the Local Courts system with the High Court and subordinate courts system. The object of this article is to discuss these new measures, as well as to give a short description of a new project in Tanganyika for the unification of the customary law of the territory.

In 1959 a Fundamental Rights Chapter was included, for reasons which are wjdely known,1 in the Constitution of the Federation of Nigeria.2 While the number of reported decisions directly involving that Chapter of the Constitution is as yet relatively small, it seems desirable to discover the approach which the courts have taken in such cases. It appears that little thought is being given in Nigeria to the manner in which the courts do, or should, treat fundamental rights cases. Many persons, in the tradition of Ivor Jennings, discount altogether the value of having fundamental rights provisions in the Constitution. Further battle with such persons is useless, for the provisions are in the Constitution; the question is no longer whether they should be there, but is rather what use should be made of them. This latter problem is not one for judges alone, though they bear the immediate brunt of meeting it. It is a problem for lawyers, law teachers and students, political scientists, indeed for society as a whole; and it must be given some more or less satisfactory answers if the courts are to play the part which the Constitution obviously intends they should play.

This article raises concerns about the impact of judicial delimitation on private exploratory rights existing in contested waters. These concerns stem from the tendency of judges to disregard any non-geographic factors during the process of maritime delimitation. This practice allows for the reallocation of the private rights in question and eventually creates tension between public international law and private law. This is discussed in the context of the Somali-Kenyan maritime dispute, which is currently under judicial consideration. The article will demonstrate that, insofar as international judges apply the standard doctrines of delimitation, the prospective judgment may cause the reallocation and, ultimately, the frustration of Kenya's private exploratory contracts in the disputed area. It suggests that a unitization agreement entered after delimitation may reverse this outcome. However, inasmuch as state cooperation lacks the cloak of international custom, the interests of private actors operating in contested waters remain at stake.

Woman-to-woman marriage is a form of customary marriage between two women, predominantly found in Africa. These customary marriages have been and to some extent still are conducted by various communities across Africa, including in Kenya. Communities such as the Kamba, Kisii, Nandi, Kikuyu and Kuria practise woman-to-woman marriages for a variety of reasons. The legal status of woman-to-woman marriages in Kenya is uncertain due to the provisions of article 45(2) of Kenya's Constitution of 2010 and section 3(1) of the Marriage Act of 2014, which stipulate that adults only have the right to marry persons of the opposite sex. However, a holistic and purposive reading of the constitution, taking into consideration its recognition of culture and the protection of children as important values in Kenyan society, and considering the historical context within which the provisions concerning same-sex marriages were included, leads to the conclusion that these provisions were not intended to proscribe the cultural practice of woman-to-woman marriage in Kenya. The constitutional validity of woman-to-woman marriage opens the door to a more expansive and fluid understanding of “family” in Kenya.

In an address to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights on 31 January, 1994, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Human Rights stressed that the ratification of human rights instruments and die effective implementation of their provisions is fundamental in a world that aspires to the rule of law and the safeguard of fundamental freedoms. This followed the adoption of a resolution by the General Assembly of the United Nations which reaffirmed that the effective implementation of the international human rights instruments is of major importance to the organization and urged all states that have not yet done so to become parties to the two International Covenants and to consider acceding to the Optional Protocols to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The London Conference on the Future of Law in Africa, meeting at Westminster from 28th December, 1959 to 8th January, 1960, and attended by leading judicial and legal representatives from many English-speaking African countries, incidentally examined the problem of legal education in and for Africa (for which see the Conference Record, Chapter 13). The discussions were centred on the problems of East Africa, since it was here that the absence of provision for local training was making itself most felt. Because of the gravity and urgency of the problem, the Conference recommended that a committee should be set up without delay to go into the whole matter.

Evidentiary rules applicable to rape and other sexual offence cases, inherited from nineteenth-century England and based on Victorian notions of women's behaviour, are alive and well in twentieth-century southern Africa. These are the cautionary rules which require a trial judge to warn him or herself of the danger of convicting a rape accused without corroboration, or independent evidence supporting the testimony of the complainant. These rules are applied because the evidence of the complainant in a sexual case is considered to be “suspect”: she is variously said to be prone to lie for reasons of her own, prone to fantasy, and prone to exaggerate. Although the cautionary rule of corroboration is still applied in many countries, most progressive and feminist thinkers consider them to be “a lingering insult to women”. In this article I will canvass the cautionary rules on evidence in sexual cases in southern Africa and attempt to show that they are not only based on outmoded stereotypes, but are also particularly unsuitable to southern Africa.

This article concerns the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It analyses the sanitary measures that the government has taken to respond to the pandemic since March 2020, the way these measures are enforced, and the extent to which women comply with the measures. The article draws from desk research and empirical data from the eastern city of Bukavu, where the research team conducted 134 structured interviews. The findings show widespread willingness to comply with some of the main measures because of fear of sanctions, fear of the pandemic and because of trust in the state or church. The article argues that many women hold the state accountable for the success in containing the virus, but also criticize the state for not providing livelihood assistance during the state of emergency. Further research is needed to assess the impact of COVID-19 on state legitimacy.

Since the mid-1980s, Botswana has relied on community based natural resources management (CBNRM) to incentivize communities to choose environmentally beneficial behaviour to advance conservation efforts. This approach has had some success, although it has not been as successful as had been hoped. Nevertheless, it is well acknowledged that CBNRM can play an important role in advancing conservation efforts. The state is therefore working to revamp the CBNRM framework so that it consistently yields beneficial results for communities and conservation. This article relies on regulatory theory and experience with CBNRM in Botswana to identify what it would take to establish an effective CBNRM regulatory framework there. It establishes that Botswana has failed to secure effective CBNRM consistently, due to the lack of a dedicated CBNRM law and inadequately resourced institutions. It recommends the promulgation of a CBNRM law with a community-centred and / or rights-based approach, and the establishment of an adequately resourced institution, charged with regulating CBNRM in Botswana.

In 2019, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights adopted General Comment No 5 on the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights: The Right to Freedom of Movement and Residence (Article 12(1)). In this general comment, the commission elaborated on the right to freedom of movement and residence within state borders. This issue, while explicit in international human rights law, is a challenge within various jurisdictions, including in Africa. This article provides a background to and commentary on General Comment No 5, leveraging on the insight of the authors, who participated in its drafting. Unlike the UN Human Rights Committee's earlier general comment, General Comment No 5 provides detailed guidance on the internal dimension of the right to free movement and residence. As “soft law”, its persuasive force depends on a number of factors, including its use at the domestic level, its visibility and its integration into regional human rights jurisprudence.

This article examines how the South African government, realizing the country's vulnerability to climate change, deemed it necessary to strengthen adaptation and mitigation measures and put in place legal and institutional frameworks to ensure implementation and compliance. Government must take responsibility for industry's inaction by implementing policies on climate change and, more importantly, through a visible change in government policy to hold industry accountable. The stringent policies and strategies being put in place are reducing vulnerability and also enhancing a broad spectrum of capacity in responding to environmental, climatic, resource and economic perturbations. The article further reviews state of the art methods and tools available to strengthen mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures in the areas of the existing frameworks regarding climate change. It also considers various measures by Eskom in particular, and strategies embarked upon by South Africa's national and local governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Property rights discourse, particularly the scope, nature, distribution, redistribution, recognition and protection of property rights, has dominated debate in African post-colonial property rights systems. In Zimbabwe, property rights law has been a contested space since the colonial era. That the property rights system is a contested arena is particularly so in view of the fact that colonial subjugation in Zimbabwe was characterized, in a very important way, by politically motivated land dispossession and, consequently, inequitable property rights distribution patterns. As a result, Zimbabwe's property rights law has always responded to mainstream, albeit fluid, political and economic undercurrents. This has meant that mainstream historical and contemporary debates have provided the context for understanding the constitutional regulation of property and land rights in Zimbabwe. This article assesses the constitutional regulation of constitutional property and land rights in Zimbabwe, and the conflicts and tension that are accommodated in the constitutional property rights framework.

“The land is family land—he may not sell it”; “the land is our family land—it does not belong to the chiefs”. How often such statements are heard in West African courts and how difficult it is to distinguish the rights claimed by the individual, the family and the community. To resolve this difficulty is the task which Dr. G. B. A. Coker has set himself in his recently published book Family Property among the Yorubas.2 In this contribution to the rapidly growing number of books on African law the author writes of a single people—the Yoruba of Western Nigeria, and of a single topic—family property; this is no light task, for the study of the concept of family property is the study of the social and political structure of the people as expressed in their land tenure.

The customary oath is woven into the fabric of African traditional life. Owing, however, to the world-wide publicity which was generated by the Mau Mau emergency in the nineteen-fifties, and the more recent publicity following allegations of oathing after the assassination of the late T. J. Mboya in Nairobi in July, 1969, oathing and Kenya have become closely associated in the public mind. The present state of the law with regard to oaths and oathing in Kenya is not entirely satisfactory, and in certain instances it must be stated that the law appears to be honoured more in the breach than in the observance.