bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Water Pollution Control in Africa: A Comparative Legal Survey
Authors: Ogolla Bondi D. 
Published: July 2009

A country's water resources are important not only for the continued well-being of its population but also because water is a critical element in its economic development. Water is vital for human, animal and plant life. Life cannot exist without it. Most domestic needs in developing countries are satisfied through direct access to natural sources. The World Health Organisation in 1976 estimated that only 38 per cent of the total population in developing countries had access to safe water supplies. This means that 62 per cent of the population resorted to lakes, rivers, streams and wells for domestic requirements. Many industries abstract water from rivers and lakes for their industrial processes and often return it to those sources as trade effluents. Water is a critical factor in agricultural production. In turn agricultural activities create by-products such as sediment loads and chemical residues with adverse impact on water quality.It is obvious therefore that a country must ensure that its water resources are rationally utilised and managed. Such utilisation and management entails the creation of normative and institutional structures, first, to regulate the allocation of an often scarce resource to competing legitimate demands and, secondly, to anticipate, prevent and control the adverse consequences of resources utilisation. This article examines the nature of the legal mechanisms instituted by selected African countries, viz. Zambia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Sudan and Kenya, for the control and prevention of water pollution. The objective is two-fold: first, to determine the adequacy of existing legal regimes and, secondly, to suggest how deficiencies in existing frameworks may be rectified.
Land Registration in Ghana: Past, Present and the Future
Authors: Agbosu L. K. 
Published: July 2009

The establishment in the Gold Coast of commercial agriculture based on a permanent cultivation of the soil, the development of the mining and timber industries in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the concession boom that these events carried in their train, created favourable conditions for capitalist development for which the private ownership of the means of production is a prerequisite. However, at that time the basic means of production in the Gold Coast, i.e. the land, was generally held in common and was not privately owned.Colonialism, however, had the effect of establishing two systems of production in the country. The capitalist sector which became dominant was created at commercial and urban centres. The traditional communal system based on what, for want of a better term, one could call subsistence agriculture, remained at the periphery in the countryside. The dominant capitalist sector produced in its own image a class of property owners consisting of European, national and rural capitalists. Attempts by the latter to acquire lands to be privately owned gave rise to problems of insecurity of title. A machinery for land registration was thought to be the most adequate means of solving the problem.
“Ill-Legal” Constraints on the Exercise of Administrative Disciplinary Powers in Nigerian Law
Authors: Odujirin Kemi 
Published: July 2009

Can a domestic tribunal or an administrative disciplinary committee try a person for a criminal offence? The answer is clearly no. But can such a tribunal, in the exercise of its disciplinary powers, try a person for misconduct even though the acts amounting to such misconduct are in the nature of criminal offences? The Nigerian Supreme Court has given a negative answer to this latter question. The aim of this short article is to show that the answer puts “ill-legal” constraints on the administrative disciplinary powers of such tribunals.The history of the problem dates back to 1968. In Denloye v. Medical and Dental Practitioners' Disciplinary Tribunal, counsel for the plaintiff raised the issue of the competence of a disciplinary tribunal to try a person for acts alleged to amount to infamous conduct in a professional respect where the acts were in the nature of criminal offences. Although the court did not consider the issue, it nevertheless observed (in the typical fashion of regarding English law as a palimpsest of Nigerian law) that the practice under the English Medical Act, 1956 which was that allegations of unprofessional conduct in the nature of offences were not dealt with under the Act in the first instance but were left to the courts, and, after conviction, disciplinary actions would follow, was the intention in Nigeria.
Towards A Bill of Rights for a Democratic South Africa
Authors: Sachs Albie 
Published: July 2009

All revolutions are impossible until they happen; then they become inevitable. South Africa has for long been trembling between the impossible and the inevitable, and it is in this singularly unstable situation that the question of human rights and the basics of government in post-apartheid society demands attention.No longer is it necessary to spend much time analysing schemes to modernize, reform liberalize, privatize, or even democratize apartheid. Like slavery and colonialism, apartheid is regarded as irremediably bad. There cannot be good apartheid, or degrees of acceptable apartheid. The only questions are how to end the system as rapidly as possible and how to ensure that the new society which replaces it lives up to the ideals of the South African people and the world community. More specifically, at the constitutional level, the issue is no longer whether to have democracy and equal rights, but how fully to achieve these principles and how to ensure that within the overall democratic scheme, the cultural diversity of the country is accommodated and the individual rights of citizens respected.
The Jurisprudence of the Dar Es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom
Authors: Shivji Issa G. 
Published: July 2009

On 19 April, 1990, 12 delegates from autonomous staff associations of six institutions of higher education in Tanzania adopted theDar es Salaam Declaration on Academic Freedom and Social Responsibility of Academics. The inaugural workshop was also attended by representatives from some eight other institutions of higher education who do not as yet have staff associations. A student representative from the proposed autonomous students' union of the University of Dar es Salaam was also invited. They all attended as observers who participated fully in the deliberations of the workshop although they did not have a right to vote.In terms of article 51, the Declaration has now come into force as it has been ratified by the membership of two-thirds of the staff associations attending the inaugural workshop. Following the formal launch of the Declaration in July 1991, the next step will be for the staff associations to pressurize the respective administrations at their institutions to accord the Declaration formal recognition. Eventually, the Government itself will be approached to accord the Declaration political acceptance.
Extra-Constitutional Parliamentary Private Secretaries in Mauritius
Authors: Meetarbhan M. J. N. 
Published: July 2009

In a recent analysis of the constitutional position of Parliamentary Private Secretaries (P.P.S.s) in the United Kingdom Professor Norton concludes that they “occupy an important twilight zone between ministers and backbenchers. Though remaining among the latter, they assume certain characteristics of the former.” Mauritius, which like many Commonwealth countries has a constitutional regime largely inspired by the British model, has recently created an innovative role for P.P.S.s who operate at sub-ministerial level but are not unpaid helpers to ministers as in the U.K. It is the intention of this article to critically examine this role.The Mauritian Constitution originally provided for a Cabinet consisting of the Prime Minister and up to 14 ministers who were all members of the Legislative Assembly, except for the Attorney-General. Under section 66 of the Constitution, the Governor General acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister could appoint up to five Parliamentary Secretaries from among members of the Assembly “to assist Ministers in the performance of their duties”. Following the formation of a coalition government in 1969, the Constitution was amended so as to increase the number of Ministers to 20 and that of Parliamentary Secretaries to ten with Mauritius having a unicameral legislative assembly of 62 elected members and up to eight nominated members, the 1969 amendments enabled almost every other elected member to be appointed a Cabinet minister or Parliamentary Secretary.
The Botswana Customary Law Act, 1969
Authors: Himsworth C. M. G. 
Published: July 2009

Prior to 1969 the legal system of Botswana enjoyed the characteristics of the dual existence of customary and common law (and the courts in which they were administered) typical of most of Anglophone Africa. The common or general law was the Roman-Dutch law “received” from the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope and this was the only law to be applied in the ordinary courts (High Court and Subordinate Courts) in the exercise of their original jurisdiction. Customary law was the preserve of the customary courts. Three main questions were inherent in the working of this system:(1) How was it to be determined which system of law (and, therefore, which system of courts) was appropriate for deciding a particular case?(2) If it was decided that customary law was to be applied, which system of customary law was appropriate?(3) Again, if customary law was to be applied, how were its rules to be ascertained in the courts?The Customary Law (Application and Ascertainment) Act of 1969 appended to this article, introduced far-reaching changes in the administration of the dual legal system and in particular contained for the first time statutory answers to the questions posed above.
Tony Allott, Pioneer of the Study of African Law: A Personal Memoir
Authors: Cotran Eugene 
Published: July 2009

In 1959 I had just completed my Diploma in International Law at Cambridge under the supervision of Eli Lauterpacht, who was assisting me in finding a post in the international law field. One day; he said that he had been approached by the School of Oriental and African Studies to find a Research Officer in “African Law”—would I be interested? I asked him what on earth “African Law” was. He wasn't sure, but suggested that I go and discuss things with a Dr. Allott at SOAS.Tony Allott was full of enthusiasm about a new comprehensive research scheme, the Restatement of African Law Project (RALP), set up at SOAS with substantial financial assistance from the Nuffield Foundation. The object was to facilitate, undertake and assist in the recording of customary laws in Commonwealth African countries in a systematic legal fashion (the choice of the term “restatement” having been influenced by the restatements of American common law). Tony said that two Research Officers had just been appointed: W. C. (Bill) Ekow Daniels of Ghana would deal with West Africa; Bill McClain (an American) would deal with Central/Southern Africa and, if I took the job, East Africa would be assigned to me.I told Tony that this sounded all very exciting, but I knew nothing about Africa or African law, let alone customary law. How could I begin to restate something of which I knew nothing? Tony was not deterred.
American Law Teachers and Africa: Some Historical Observations
Authors: Paul James C. N. 
Published: July 2009

In 1961 Tony Allott, then a rather young elder statesman of African law, helped to foster my interest in that subject, and my subsequent work in Ethiopia. He and several other distinguished colleagues in London also encouraged other American initiatives to assist the development of legal education and research in Africa, efforts which began in 1962, burgeoned during the ensuing decade, and then withered rapidly.The activities of the early 60s helped to generate an extraordinary number of different kinds of projects: the temporary placement of over 150 Americans in law teaching positions in African institutions; a large and wide variety of research and writing; the founding of law reporters, law journals and university institutes of African law, both within Africa and elsewhere; the flow of a substantial number of Africans to graduate legal studies in U.S. and U.K. universities; new kinds of interactions between African, British and American scholars. These activities also contributed to the emergence (notably in North America) of that amorphous, contentious field of scholarship which came to be called “law and development”, and, then, in the latter 70s, to acrimonious critiques and agonising reappraisals of much of all this effort.Tony Allott participated in, or observed, much of this history, as anyone familiar with his career and bibliography will know. I hope that this brief account of some of these past activities may be of some interest to him, and to others interested in law and social change in Africa.
Towards a People's Philosophy of Law!
Authors: Sanders A. J. G. M. 
Published: July 2009

It was in August 1980 that Professor Allott visited Southern Africa for the first time, and I am proud that it was the Institute to which I am attached which arranged the visit. In October 1981 we had the pleasure of welcoming Professor Allott to our region again. This time the happy occasion had been arranged by the University of Swaziland. All of us took an instant liking to Professor Allott. (As for our visitor, I got the distinct impression that he, too, enjoyed the encounter!) The way in which he was able to keep our discussions on track and lend perspective to them made a great impression. Hitherto, we had known him as a learned author on African law and the “internal conflict of laws”. “In the flesh”, he proved to be a man of the people and a teacher par excellence—concerned but never patronising, incisive in his criticisms but never disparaging. This impression is confirmed in his publication, The Limits of Law, which has become a source of constant reference in the Southern African region, and which inspired this essay.For reasons Professor Allott will understand, my contribution to his Festschrift has taken the form of a cri de coeur from a troubled part of the world which, only too aware of the limits and the excesses of law, continues to put its faith in law as a social directive.
African Legal Tradition J. M. Sarbah, J. B. Danquah, N. A. Ollennu
Authors: Sinitsina Irina 
Published: July 2009

The Systematic study of African customary law and of the establishment of its role in the legal systems of African states was initiated, above all, by works of A. N. Allott. The scholar gives unflagging attention to the local legal schools which laid a serious basis for the present-day comparative study both of customary law and of national legal systems, for clarifying the possible ways of their development, and for a search for optimal legal forms which would take due account of the interests of small ethnic groups. The formation of national legal systems of African states has aroused a major interest in the customary law of ethnic groups. A. N. Allott correctly observed that it was necessary to pay heed, in particular, to the historical aspect of customary law.The most vivid example of the high level of development of autochthonous legal institutions and of their study by local legal scholars is furnished by the legal school of the ethnolinguistic group known as Akan (the Gold Coast, later Ghana).Present day Ghana in the pre-colonial period formed the states of the Akan peoples—Fanti and Ashanti—and of the inhabitants of the Birim-Volta river region—Akim and Akuapem. Screened by a tropical forest from the north and facing the Gulf of Guinea, the region remained isolated from external influences for many long epochs, creating specific systems of state law. The types and forms of their customary law mechanism characterize the level of development and specific features of appropriate societies.
Traditional Law and Religion Among the Bulsa of Northern Ghana
Authors: Schott Rüdiger 
Published: July 2009

In October 1974 I attended a court session in Sandema, capital of the Bulsa District in the Upper Region of Ghana.1Before the Paramount Chief of the Bulsa, Mr. Azantinlow, had appeared two men from Kanjaga, another Bulsa village. One of them complained that some of his donkeys had gone astray and had been illegally appropriated by his neighbour. The latter denied these charges, stating that the donkeys in his compound were his own and not identical with the lost donkeys of the complainant.The case had been brought previously before the chief of Kanjaga who had advised them to consult a diviner (baano), who by means of his divining practices should find out to whom the donkeys belonged. The diviner, consulted by the complainant's father, came to a conclusion in his favour, yet the defendant did not believe what the complainant told him about the outcome of the divining, but accused him of telling lies. In addition the defendant asked: “In our land (i.e. according to our customs), if you consult a diviner, don't you also offer sacrifices to abogluk?”2This the complainant's father apparently had failed to do.The case was finally brought before the Paramount Chief in Sandema. He refused to judge the case, but referred it back to the elders of the village: they should “talk the case” (biisi bììka) before it was brought to the Chief again, if necessary.
Early European Influences on Tswana Law
Authors: Schapera I. 
Published: July 2009

In the closing paragraph of his inaugural lecture Law and Language, Professor Allott referred to what he termed “a daunting obstacle” to the intensive study of African legal systems.That obstacle is the rapid disappearance, before our very eyes, of the traditional systems that we have proposed to study. A generation ago there would not have been that difficulty; but today the traditional tribunals have vanished in many African countries where their place has been taken by statutory local courts. Even where the traditional courts appear to have survived, at least in name, they are usually affected by the impact of western law and institutions and of central government control.Those words were written in 1965. How true and necessary they were is shown by the fact that more than fifty years previously—even more than “a generation ago”—the impact of “western” influences upon the Tswana peoples of the Bechuanaland Protectorate (now the Republic of Botswana) had already led to many changes in the indigenous legal system, although, at that time, the “traditional courts” still survived virtually intact and not merely “in name”.The nature and extent of those changes can be readily ascertained by the fortunate chance that, there are still available the records of approximately 470 cases tried, over a period of six and a half years, in the highest traditional court of the Ngwaketse, a major Tswana chiefdom.
African Customs in an English Setting: Legal and Policy Aspects of Recognition
Authors: Poulter Sebastian 
Published: July 2009

Although there are no reliable, detailed official figures as to the present ethnic composition of the population of Great Britain, a recent survey by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys has estimated that the number of Africans settled here is just over 100,000. Many more, of course, arrive in Britain each year as students or visitors. Indeed, in 1986 the volume of visitors from Nigeria and Ghana was considered by the British Government to be placing such burdens on immigration officials at the ports of entry that it was felt necessary to alter the immigration rules; people coming from those two countries now have to be in possession of visas before they arrive in the United Kingdom.The presence of a significant number of Africans in England today is nothing new. There were at least 10,000 here in the late eighteenth century and possibly as many as 30,000, at a time when the total population of the country was only about a sixth of what it is today. West African slaves were brought to England from the 1570s onward. Most of them were used as household servants, often by the aristocracy, and some were employed as court entertainers. Indeed, at the beginning of the sixteenth century Henry VII had a black trumpeter (of uncertain origin) in his retinue. Much earlier, Africans served as soldiers in the Roman legions which occupied Britain during the first four centuries A.D.
The Work of the Legal Resources Centre in South Africa in the Area of Human Rights Promotion and Protection
Authors: Mgoqi Wallace 
Published: July 2009

The Legal Resources Centre (LRC) is a non-profit-making law centre. Its aims are to encourage belief in the value of law as an instrument of justice and to give practical effect to this goal by providing legal and educational services in the public interest. It is controlled and funded by the Legal Resources Trust (LRT) which is a South African charitable and educational trust registered under the Fundraising Act. It is supported by development agencies, corporations, charitable foundations and concerned individuals. The trustees include judges, senior advocates and attorneys. For the fiscal year April 1990 to March 1991 the trustees of the LRT approved a budget of R8.5 million for the work of the LRC's offices.The LRC was established after nation-wide consultations on the desirability of a legal resources centre produced positive feedback from a wide range of constituencies, and it became operational at the beginning of 1979. It seeks to fulfil the following purposes:(a) To provide legal representation for litigants in any court of law, tribunal or body before whom a party may be represented by counsel or attorney.(b) To conduct a programme in legal education and conduct seminars of educational value.(c) To engage in research in legal areas including all matters relevant to the effective administration of justice.(d) To publish the results of any research undertaken by it, and any material relevant to its objects.
The Path to Constitutional Democracy in South Africa: An Update
Authors: Carpenter Gretchen , Bewkes Margaret 
Published: July 2009

Before President F. W. de Klerk's epoch-making address on 2 February, 1990, anyone who predicted that within less than two years virtually all the major political parties and groupings in South Africa would be sitting around a conference table negotiating a new constitution, would have been dismissed as naive at best. Even more amazing is the substantial degree of consensus which has been achieved in what is a relatively short time, given the long history of conflict which preceded the dawning of the “new” South Africa.The focus of the negotiations is the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (commonly referred to by the acronym Codesa). A wide spectrum of political opinion is represented here (a total of 19 different organizations at the last count), although organizations and parties on both the extreme right, and the extreme left, have refused to participate. While the government, the National Party and the African National Congress (ANC) may be seen as the main players, the role played by even the most minor participants cannot be discounted, because of the emphasis that is placed on consensus by most of the parties involved.