Access to Justice and Human Security: Cultural Contradictions in Rural South Africa

ISBN-13: 9781138060777 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 274 str.

Sindiso Mnisi Weeks

Opis

People in rural South Africa live subject to at least two distinct legal universes, and their respective dispute management forums: state law and vernacular law. This book discusses how contemporary rural people use vernacular dispute management forums and what needs exist for the legal regulation thereof. The author takes the discussion of how 'traditional courts' are to be regulated out of the legislative arena back to the empirical context in which these forums exist and operate. The book provides in-depth understanding of the empirical realities of vernacular dispute management and the dissonances with the formal development of this system that is being proposed by the State.

Spis treści

1. Introduction;  Section I: Interpolating vernacular dispute management in South Africa;  2. Contentious background: history and theory;  Section II: Institutional attributes of dispute management in Msinga;  3. Controversial subject matter: what disputes are heard?;  4. Competing authorities: what forums exist over what jurisdictions and how do they manage disputes between them?;  Section III: Interpersonal attributes of dispute management in Msinga;  5. Contradictory social relations: who is disputing with whom and why?;  6. Conflicting identities: fears, vulnerabilities and strengths accompanying gender and age;  7. Confounding objectives: what do people really want?;  Section IV: Integrating access to justice and human security in rural South Africa;  8. Conclusion: a vision of the South African legal order far beyond the Traditional Courts Bill

O autorze

Sindiso Mnisi Weeks is Assistant Professor in Public Policy of Excluded Populations in the School for Global Inclusion and Social Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, USA. She previously served as a senior researcher in the Centre for Law and Society at the University of Cape Town, where she worked on the Rural Women’s Action Research Programme combining research, advocacy and policy work on women, property, governance and participation under customary law and the South African Constitution. She holds a BA and LLB from the University of Cape Town and received her DPhil in Law (with a focus on socio-legal studies) from the　University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. Prior to Oxford, she clerked for then Deputy Chief Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, Dikgang Moseneke. She co-authored African Customary Law in South Africa: Post-Apartheid and Living Law Perspectives, published in 2015 by Oxford University Press Southern Africa.