The need for governments to be given the powers to meet future emergencies, whether man-made or natural, with speed and effectiveness is widely recognized. However, because of the frequent violations of human rights committed by states under the pretext of overcoming emergencies and restoring order, there has always been a need for the exercise of these emergency powers to be strictly controlled to prevent their abuse.

This article reviews the current state of emergency powers in Cameroon in the light of the 1996 amendment to the Constitution and emerging international standards regulating the declaration of a state of emergency. It argues that emergency powers are only consistent with a democratic system of governance when there are effective controls to check against their abuse. It concludes that the expansion of presidential powers, with wide-ranging and vague powers to deal with emergencies, combined with the absence of any effective legislative oversight or judicial control raises serious doubts about the country's transition from the numbing years of authoritarian dictatorship to a fully fledged constitutional democracy.

This article looks at the essential features and the effects of the South African land reform initiatives launched in the mid-1990s. After examining the context in which these initiatives have taken place, it deals separately with the three subprogrammes of land reform, namely, land restitution, land redistribution and land tenure reform. It discusses two particular features of the programme: its provision of title to millions of South Africans and its adjustment of the correlative position between the landowner and the holder of a lesser possessory or occupational right.

This article seeks to provide a critical analysis and understanding of the institution of chieftainship in Botswana. It looks at the institution of chieftainship starting from before colonization, right through colonization to the present day, post-colonization. It will be observed that interference with the institution started from colonization and continues to the present day. Consequently, this article weaves a discussion of the justification for such interference through an analysis of the status and powers of chiefs during colonization and their status post-colonization. The chiefs’ reaction to the encroachment is also covered, for the chiefs were not simply passive and co-operative while their powers were being taken away.

The end of almost fourteen years of military government, with the restoration of civilian rule in Nigeria on 1st October, 1979, would inevitably have been a landmark of great significance for Africa and the Commonwealth. What has given it quite exceptional importance is the fact that Nigeria, turning its back on Westminster, has chosen to adopt a new constitutional structure which can aptly be regarded as a version of “the Washington model”. This appears as a striking and innovative departure among Commonwealth constitutions which, despite the proliferation of republican systems, including executive presidencies and, in Africa, the spread of one-party models, generally preserve—in theory at least—certain basic features of “the Westminster model”: hence the preference for a parliamentary executive, in many states combined with presidential rule, however unrealistic in practice the notion of ministerial responsibility to parliament may have become. The new Nigerian Constitution has no place for such terms as “parliament”, “cabinet” or “prime minister”, yet the transition from the Westminster to a Washington model is a logical, predictable one likely to prompt imitation elsewhere: indeed, the new Constitution of Ghana, where military government also came to an end in 1979, has taken the same path.

The article examines the realization of the right to health through the African concept of ubuntu. It attempts to show that ubuntu plays or ought to play a significant role in the realization of the right to health. This argument is advanced by identifying the attributes of ubuntu relevant to the implementation of the right to health and then applying these attributes to practical scenarios to operationalize the right to health. South Africa is used as a special point of reference because of the jurisprudence on ubuntu that has emerged there since 1994.

The 1990s will go down in history as the decade when Africans had the chance to correct and make up for the blunders of the 1960s. Constitutional and multi-party democracy is now back in fashion and many are ready to forgive the errors of the past and make the sacrifices that will make such democracy and the expected concomitant economic progress possible. The daunting task facing African constitutional engineers is how to free themselves, intellectually and practically, from their strings of colonial loyalty, and how to frame constitutional arrangements that are adapted to the prevailing conditions and are genuinely democratic.

The purpose of this article is to trace the development of some aspects of the law of Kenya, commencing with the colonial period (Part I) and then considering the reforms in the post-independence era (Part II). Part III deals with the setting up of the Law Reform Commission in 1982 and considers some of the subjects which it might deal with.

The political and economic problems of language policy in modern Africa have continued as a reminder of the unforgettable historical fact of European colonialism. Today there are two major regions of Africa known as Anglophone and Francophone Africa. Much as many African leaders would have wished to discard the language of the former colonial power and substitute an indigenous language, this has proved problematic because in many cases there is not a single widely-spoken local language. In some cases any attempt to raise the status of one indigenous language into a national language would have provoked wasteful inter-ethnic conflict.

For sociologists and lawyers Somalia presents a fascinating observation ground.

Most of this long and narrow strip of land straddling the Horn of Africa is a dry savannah punctuated by graceful acacias spreading out their thorny leaves like giant umbrellas. Most of the inhabitants are nomadic herdsmen whose principal measure of wealth is the camel and whose main occupation and preoccupation is combating the ever-recurrent droughts by periodic treks in search of water and grazing.

In almost all the former British African territories the colonial power tried to make use of the traditional dispute settlement agencies which it found on arrival. The history of these efforts is familiar, following a generally similar course in most territories. The arrangements made in the early years were haphazard; a good deal of formalization took place around 1930; more profound changes were initiated in the early 1960's and have continued since. But the familiar legislative history yields little information about what has been happening on the ground. We know very little of the way in which the traditional agencies drawn into the official system actually reacted towards this process of incorporation. Leaving aside what the statute may have said, have they remained the agencies to which Africans actually resorted for the settlement of their disputes? Has the type of business coming before them changed? Similarly we know little about those agencies, typically at the lower levels, which did not undergo incorporation. Have they continued to function, or have they simply died away?

In the Mozambican context of the state amnesty for civil war crimes, war survivors have used their local ethics of reciprocity to create justice. This article analyses how survivors have attempted to persuade judges in traditional courts to adjudicate in serious wartime disputes. These judges, who have no official mandate to redress wartime offences, tried to preserve the conflicting interests of the litigants and the state. This positioning, coupled with the fact that the local ethics of reciprocity are embedded in uneven power and gender relations, resulted in some cases being adjudicated and others not, and in some disputes receiving no gender justice. Nevertheless, some of the interventions indicate that national and international institutions of justice are not the only ones engaged in the struggle against impunity for wartime crimes. In Mozambique, specific attention must be paid to the study of traditional justice mechanisms as fonts of redress for wartime crimes and for the long-term contribution they can make.

The quite complex problems of human and group survival in Africa do not easily lend themselves to diagnosis or solutions within the human rights frame of analysis. There are several reasons for this. Some arise from the recent and not–so–recent history of the continent, others are associated with the foundations and formulation of the human rights framework itself, and the rest with the orientation of those governments, individuals, and organizations involved in or entrusted with translating the promises of human rights into human reality. The invidious dichotomies within human rights discourse between civil, political, economic, social, cultural, and collective (solidarity) rights or the so–called “categories” or “generations” of human rights, with the attendant and implicit hierarchy among these categories of rights, fails to resonate with most people around the continent for whom contact with the state is a frightening prospect that defies such convenient intellectual categories.

The small East-Central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi have been in the news lately because of the extreme violence they have been and are experiencing. While many observers have interpreted these conflicts in strictly ethnic terms, pitting Hutu against Tutsi, they are in fact political: at stake is power, the control over the state as a principal means of accumulation and reproduction of a social class. This struggle in the context of profound destabilization has given rise to extraordinary forms of constitutional engineering, which have attempted to legitimize the assumption of power by small minorities.

This article examines the practice of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice relating to the exhaustion of domestic remedies. It argues that the court is wrong to maintain the view that it is not bound by the doctrine, simply because the court's protocol is silent on the point. The author urges the court to reconsider its view in order to align its practice with prevailing customary international law and treaty trends on the exhaustion of domestic remedies in international suits espoused before international courts by or on behalf of individuals.

Affiliation with a political community or entity has throughout history been important for the purposes of protection and belonging. This article discusses the concept of citizenship in Sudan in light of the Sudanese and Southern Sudanese interim constitutions and relevant laws, taking into consideration the international norms in this regard. It also sheds light on the application of the law and possible scenarios when the South becomes an independent nation. It argues that a set of legal rules that organize nationality issues in Sudan and Southern Sudan are inconsistent with general nationality principles and that, if their provisions remain valid until the fragmentation of Sudan becomes a reality, many post-secession violations will be difficult to avoid. It suggests a series of measures that the main parties to the National Unity Government should take to avert such violations and secure peaceful and neighbourly relations in the years to come.

The problem of abortion is not primarily a problem of law. The law clearly addresses the social practice of abortion, it influences the means of practice and may, at its best, resolve the social consequences of abortion, but the problem of abortion is located in social experience and prevailing social philosophies, rather than in statute books and judicial decisions. Abortion lies at the heart of a number of concerns of particular sensitivity, but it can also have a severe medical and personal impact.

The Agreement Establishing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AEAfCFTA) is a revolutionary treaty of the African Union (AU) which creates an African single market to guarantee the free movement of persons, capital, goods and services. The AEAfCFTA is geared towards enabling seamless trade among African countries. The single market relies heavily on the processing of the personal data of persons resident within and outside the AU, thereby necessitating an effective data protection regime. However, the data protection regime across Africa is fragmented, with each country either having a distinct data protection framework or none at all. This lack of a uniform continental framework threatens to clog the wheels of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), because by demanding compliance with the various data protection laws across Africa, free trade will be inhibited, the very problem the AEAfCFTA seeks to remediate. These concerns are considered and applicable solutions are proposed to ensure the successful implementation of the AfCFTA.

There can be no doubt that British courts have, in general, built up a most impressive record by, and today enjoy a well-deserved reputation for, their sympathetic and intelligent application of those religious or customary laws, evolved by peoples of a culture and background very different from their own, which they have so often been called upon to administer. But there can be no branch of the law in which Muslim peoples who are subject to the jurisdiction of British courts, or courts trained in English traditions, have been made to suffer so many frustrations—by the judicial infusion of alien ideas, by misinterpretation or basic ignorance of the Islamic doctrines, and even by what can only be termed a rigidity of mind which ill-accords with this illustrious tradition—as in the law of waqf.

In 2005 the government of Ethiopia prepared many proclamations, regulations and guidelines dealing with biosafety, traditional knowledge and plant breeders' rights, with a view to implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Cartagena Protocol to the CBD on Biosafety (CPB), and to joining the World Trade Organization. In the course of the lengthy negotiations of the Food and Agriculture Organization International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, the Ethiopian government decided not to include coffee in the list, annexed to the treaty, of plants covered by the multilateral system of facilitated germplasm flows. The purpose of this paper is to analyse these texts and the potential bargaining power of Ethiopia regarding coffee germplasm transactions, after a rapid description of the general context of seed production and seed markets in Ethiopia. It concludes that policies aimed at improving germplasm and final product quality, and rewarding farmers for their contribution in this process, are paramount.

Albert Hermann Post (1839–95) is an almost forgotten figure in the history of legal anthropology, yet he was the first anthropologist to propose the study of the legal relations of indigenous peoples. His questionnaire is presented here in English for the first time. It was distributed in the 1890s and the answers, from Cameroon, Mali, Western Sudan, Uganda, German East Africa, German South West Africa, Madagascar, and the Solomon and Marshall Islands, were published by Steinmetz in 1903, after Post's death. The questionnaire gives an insight into the state of German anthropology at the time and, however naïve the method, the answers provide in many cases the only written evidence for the period on the societies studied. This article also considers Hildebrandt's reassessment of Post and gives an account of the circumstances leading up to the distribution of Josef Kohler's later questionnaire.