Strong NGOs and Weak States

Strong NGOs and Weak States

Author: Milli Lake

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-05-31

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1108419372

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Offers evidence that opportunity structures created by state weakness can allow NGOs to exert unparalleled influence over local human rights law and practice.


Constitutionalism and Transitional Justice in South Africa

Constitutionalism and Transitional Justice in South Africa

Author: Andrea Lollini

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1845457641

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Over the last fifteen years, the South African postapartheid Transitional Amnesty Process – implemented by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) – has been extensively analyzed by scholars and commentators from around the world and from almost every discipline of human sciences. Lawyers, historians, anthropologists and sociologists as well as political scientists have tried to understand, describe and comment on the ‘shocking’ South African political decision to give amnesty to all who fully disclosed their politically motivated crimes committed during the apartheid era. Investigating the postapartheid transition in South Africa from a multidisciplinary perspective involving constitutional law, criminal law, history and political science, this book explores the overlapping of the postapartheid constitution-making process and the Amnesty Process for political violence under apartheid and shows that both processes represent important innovations in terms of constitutional law and transitional justice systems. Both processes contain mechanisms that encourage the constitution of the unity of the political body while ensuring future solidity and stability. From this perspective, the book deals with the importance of several concepts such as truth about the past, publicly shared memory, unity of the political body and public confession.


Ending Gender-Based Violence

Ending Gender-Based Violence

Author: Hannah E. Britton

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2020-04-16

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0252051971

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South African women's still-increasing presence in local, provincial, and national institutions has inspired sweeping legislation aimed at advancing women's rights and opportunity. Yet the country remains plagued by sexual assault, rape, and intimate partner violence. Hannah E. Britton examines the reasons gendered violence persists in relationship to social inequalities even after women assume political power. Venturing into South African communities, Britton invites service providers, religious and traditional leaders, police officers, and medical professionals to address gender-based violence in their own words. Britton finds the recent turn toward carceral solutions—with a focus on arrests and prosecutions—fails to address the complexities of the problem and looks at how changing specific community dynamics can defuse interpersonal violence. She also examines how place and space affect the implementation of policy and suggests practical ways policymakers can support street level workers. Clear-eyed and revealing, Ending Gender-Based Violence offers needed tools for breaking cycles of brutality and inequality around the world.


Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa

Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa

Author: Marius Pieterse

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-09-08

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 1351671979

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Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa considers the overlap between legal and everyday struggles for social and spatial justice in the particular context of Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing from literature across disciplines of law, urban geography and urban planning, as well as from reported case-law concerning the invocation of constitutional rights in Johannesburg and other South African cities, the book critically examines whether, and to what extent, the invocation of legal rights before South African courts have contributed to the advancement of social justice in the city. It considers the impact of the legal assertion of different constituent aspects of the so-called "right to the city" on the many people simultaneously performing the right, the governance structures responsible for enabling and facilitating its enjoyment and, thirdly, the physical place in which it is performed. Drawing broad conclusions on the utility of rights-based litigation for the achievement of social change and spatial justice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Africa, constitutional law, human rights law, regulatory law, sociology of rights, studies of law and society, urban studies, urban geography, governance studies, and development studies.


My Own Liberator

My Own Liberator

Author: Dikgang Moseneke

Publisher: Pan Macmillan South africa

Published: 2018-01-01

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 1770105093

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In My Own Liberator, Dikgang Moseneke pays homage to the many people and places that have helped to define and shape him. In tracing his ancestry, the influence on both his maternal and paternal sides is evident in the values they imbued in their children – the importance of family, the value of hard work and education, an uncompromising moral code, compassion for those less fortunate and unflinching refusal to accept an unjust political regime or acknowledge its oppressive laws. As a young activist in the Pan-Africanist Congress, at the tender age of fifteen, Moseneke was arrested, detained and, in 1963, sentenced to ten years on Robben Island for participating in anti-apartheid activities. Physical incarceration, harsh conditions and inhumane treatment could not imprison the political prisoners’ minds, however, and for many the Island became a school not only in politics but an opportunity for dedicated study, formal and informal. It set the young Moseneke on a path towards a law degree that would provide the bedrock for a long and fruitful legal career and see him serve his country in the highest court. My Own Liberator charts Moseneke’ s rise as one of the country’s top legal minds, who not only helped to draft the interim constitution, but for fifteen years acted as a guardian of that constitution for all South Africans, helping to make it a living document for the country and its people.


Prosecuting Apartheid-era Crimes?

Prosecuting Apartheid-era Crimes?

Author: Tyler R. Giannini

Publisher: Human Rights Program, Harvard Law School

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13:

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This book presents diverse perspectives on prosecutions in South Africa, including a foreword by playwright and actor John Kani. Throughout, it highlights such important themes related to any post-conflict prosecution as rule-of-law concerns, questions of evenhandedness and moral relativism, and the limits of a court-centered approach to justice.


Access to Justice and Human Security

Access to Justice and Human Security

Author: Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-11-22

Total Pages: 423

ISBN-13: 1351669567

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For most people in rural South Africa, traditional justice mechanisms provide the only feasible means of accessing any form of justice. These mechanisms are popularly associated with restorative justice, reconciliation and harmony in rural communities. Yet, this ethnographic study grounded in the political economy of rural South Africa reveals how historical conditions and contemporary pressures have strained these mechanisms’ ability to deliver the high normative ideals with which they are notionally linked. In places such as Msinga access to justice is made especially precarious by the reality that human insecurity – a composite of physical, social and material insecurity – is high for both ordinary people and the authorities who staff local justice forums; cooperation is low between traditional justice mechanisms and the criminal and social justice mechanisms the state is meant to provide; and competition from purportedly more effective ‘twilight institutions’, like vigilante associations, is rife. Further contradictions are presented by profoundly gendered social relations premised on delicate social trust that is closely monitored by one’s community and enforced through self-help measures like witchcraft accusations in a context in which violence is, culturally and practically, a highly plausible strategy for dispute management. These contextual considerations compel us to ask what justice we can reasonably speak of access to in such an insecure context and what solutions are viable under such volatile human conditions? The book concludes with a vision for access to justice in rural South Africa that takes seriously ordinary people’s circumstances and traditional authorities’ lived experiences as documented in this detailed study. The author proposes a cooperative governance model that would maximise the resources and capacity of both traditional and state justice apparatus for delivering the legal and social justice – namely, peace and protection from violence as well as mitigation of poverty and destitution – that rural people genuinely need.


The Role of the Highest Courts of the United States of America and South Africa, and the European Court of Justice in Foreign Affairs

The Role of the Highest Courts of the United States of America and South Africa, and the European Court of Justice in Foreign Affairs

Author: Riaan Eksteen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-22

Total Pages: 468

ISBN-13: 9462652953

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This book deals with what the author considers a sorely neglected question, namely the role of the judiciary in states’ foreign policy processes. Eksteen argues that the impact of the judiciary on foreign affairs is understudied and that recognition of its role in foreign affairs is now due. This makes it a ground-breaking scholarly contribution that should first of all prove of value to students, scholars, researchers and practitioners in the two broad fields of politics and law for the wide scope of issues it covers and the very comprehensive reference lists it contains. Secondly, professionals working within politics, including members of the legislatures of the United States, the European Union and South Africa, as well as members of the judiciaries there, should find this book of benefit. A detailed examination has been undertaken of the role of the United States Supreme Court, the two high courts in South Africa, namely the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, and the European Court of Justice of the European Union, in foreign affairs. The author substantiates the unmistakable fact that these Courts have become involved in and influence foreign affairs. Furthermore, that they have not shied away from using their judicial authority when dealing with cases touching on foreign affairs and especially presidential overreach. The lack of recognition of the judiciary’s role in foreign affairs is still noticeable in Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) literature. This book concludes that FPA has to accept and give proper recognition to the judiciary and its increasing relevance in foreign affairs. Dr. Riaan Eksteen is a Former South African Ambassador residing in Namibia; from 1968-1973 he served at the South African Embassy in Washington D.C.; between 1976-1994, he subsequently served as Ambassador and Head of Mission at the U.N. in New York (1976-81), in Namibia (1990-91), at the U.N. in Geneva (1992-94), and in Turkey, with accreditation also to Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan (1995-97). He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Johannesburg in October 2018.


The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902-1936

The Making of South African Legal Culture 1902-1936

Author: Martin Chanock

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-03-05

Total Pages: 596

ISBN-13: 9780521791564

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Martin Chanock's illuminating and definitive perspective on that development examines all areas of the law including criminal law and criminology; the Roman-Dutch law; the State's African law; and land, labour and 'rule of law' questions.