The South African Constitution, with its Bill of Rights, represents a decisive break with the past and a great advance by South Africans in reclaiming their human dignity and fundamental freedoms. Before 1993 punishment of crime was defined by the social order which had been designed under the apartheid government; prisoners were generally subjected to cruel and degrading treatment while criminal suspects could be detained indefinitely and without trial. The penal system was to some extent directed at controlling and regulating the conduct of Blacks. The constitutional dispensation has resulted in a re-look at our penal policy and has placed great emphasis on the rights of prisoners. These rights flow from the rights to equality, dignity and liberty. The Constitution has entrenched certain rights of criminal suspects, including the right to a fair trial. Legislation has been introduced to ensure compliance with the constitutional imperatives. The new dispensation has given rise to debate on many issues, and facilitated a rise of a victims’ movement seeking to promote victim interests. This movement has noted that offenders and alleged offenders enjoy a series of constitutional rights, and that corresponding rights for crime victims need to be introduced. Victims are unlikely to be accorded rights in the literal sense of the word; nevertheless, they need to be accommodated within the criminal justice system. This need has given birth to a charter for crime victims, a document that seeks to empower crime victims. The perception remains, however, that offenders and crime suspects still enjoy too much protection, to the detriment of victim interests. The development of victim rights is hampered by the adversarial nature of the country’s criminal justice system and the perception that victims have no role to play within the criminal process, other than as witnesses. The purpose of the thesis is to analyse the extent to which our Bill of Rights strikes a balance between the interests of alleged offenders and offenders on the one hand, and crime victims on the other. It also seeks to create awareness about the plight of crime victims and to make suggestions on possible solutions. / Criminal and Procedural Law / LLD (Criminal & Procedural Law)

In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called St. Augustine, Florida, the most racist city in America. The resulting demonstrations and violence in the summer of 1964 only confirmed King’s characterization of the city. Yet, St. Augustine’s black history has its origins with the Spanish who founded the city in 1565. With little racial disturbance until the modern civil rights movement, why did St. Augustine erupt in the way it did? With the beginnings of Jim Crow in Florida around the turn of the century in 1900, St. Augustine’s black community began to resist the growing marginalization of their community. Within the confines of the predominantly black neighborhood known as Lincolnville, the black community carved out their own space with a culture, society and economy of its own. This paper explores how the African American community within St. Augustine developed a racial solidarity and identity facing a number of events within the state and nation. Two world wars placed the community’s sons on the front lines of battle but taught them to value of fighting for equality. The Great Depression forced African Americans across the South to rely upon one another in the face of rising racial violence. Florida’s racial violence cast a dark shadow over the history of the state and remained a formidable obstacle to overcome for African Americans in the fight for equal rights in the state. Although faced with few instances of violence against them, African Americans in St. Augustine remained fully aware of the violence others faced in Florida communities like Rosewood, Ocoee and Marianna. St. Augustine’s African American community faced these obstacles and learned to look inward for support and empowerment rather than outside. This paper examines the factors that vii encouraged this empowerment that translates into activism during the local civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The purpose of this research is to examine the life of a courageous woman who pioneered in the development of social organizations for the elevation and betterment of the Black community in the early twentieth century in Atlanta. The research will show how Mrs. John Hope, a black woman, struggled against a hostile and racist society in an effort to help build a respectable and healthy black community in the city of Atlanta. This research was executed by the careful examination of primary sources, such as speeches, letters, newspapers, minutes and Mrs. Hope's memoranda presently found in the Neighborhood Union Collection located in the Atlanta University Trevor Arnett Library Archives. Oral history, a new innovation in the field, is also used in the effort to present a biographical profile of this outstanding pioneer. The historical method of analyzing, categorizing, collecting, and communicating evidence and and documents are used in the presentation of this information. It is the researcher's intention to show that Mrs. John Hope was instrumental in pioneering in the idea of self-help and community building in Black Atlanta. The research also examines the activities of Mrs. Hope as a prototype of the black woman's role in the struggle for black survival and dignity.

The cultivation of a culture of constitutionalism remains the greatest challenge to Nigeria’s constitutional democracy. Militarism affected in a very substantial way Africa’s efforts to develop a culture of constitutionalism in the continent. Nigeria typifies the failed African effort in trying to establish an enduring democracy and constitutionalism. After ten years of transition from militarism to constitutional democracy and the euphoria of the country’s return to democracy, the country is still on a slow march in the entrenchment of the practice of constitutionalism. This work primarily sets out to investigate the state of constitutionalism in Nigeria. Human rights and judiciary as constituents of constitutionalism are the main focus of that investigation. A crucial question that encapsulates the main objective of the study is how can Nigeria entrench a culture of constitutionalism? The study, therefore, investigates the question whether constitutional formalism or textualism without more can guarantee constitutionalism. It advocates that constitutionality does not necessarily lead to constitutionalism. The work further probes into the nature, extent and reasons for the past failure of constitutionalism in the country and its current state. The study also embarks on an exploration into the mechanisms for the protection of human rights, the problems and challenges in Nigeria. The challenges include the introduction of the “new Sharia” by some States in Nigeria; the failure to accord socio-economic rights due consideration in Nigerian jurisprudence and the poor pace of the domestication of human rights norms. The work demonstrates the relationship and linkage between human rights, democracy and judicialism in the study of constitutionalism. / Public Constitutional and International Law / LL.D.

Text in English / The substitution of the dominant Western jurisprudence for South Africa’s indigenous normative values during colonial and apartheid times has resulted in a perverted conception of law that presents Western jurisprudence as synonymous with law. In the era of the constitutional recognition of African law where the application of the democratic principle demands that the newly re-enfranchised African communities deserve to be regulated by their own indigenous values, the resilience of this legal culture has become problematic. To reverse this situation legal and constitutional interpreters must rethink and reshape their contributions to the achievement of the post-apartheid version of African law envisioned by the South African Constitution. The application of African law in a free and liberated environment must reflect its own social, political and legal cosmology in which its institutions operate within their own indigenous frame of reference. A study of the anatomy of African jurisprudence as a means of gaining insight into the indigenous worldview which was characterised by the culture of communal living and the ethos of inclusiveness to counter the prevailing hegemony of autonomous individualism, has become urgent. To achieve this such pillars of African jurisprudence as the philosophy of ubuntu must be exhumed in order for African law’s rehabilitation under the Constitution to be undertaken on the basis of its authentic articulation uncontaminated by colonial and apartheid distortions. The task of developing the African law of the 21st century to the extent required by the Constitution is a challenge of enormous proportions which demands an appreciation of the historical and political environment in which African law lost its primacy as the original legal system of South Africa after Roman-Dutch law was imposed on the South Africa population. The revival of African law becomes more urgent when one considers that when Africans lost control of their legal system they had not abdicated sovereignty voluntarily to the newcomers. The validity of the imposition of Western jurisprudence is vitiated by the colonial use of such imperial acts as colonisation, conquest, and annexation as the basis on which the regime of Roman-Dutch law was imposed on South Africa. Ever since, African law has been subordinated and denigrated through colonial and apartheid policies which relegated it, via the repugnancy clause, to a sub-system of Roman-Dutch law with whose standards it was forced to comply. The repugnancy clause left African law a distorted system no longer recognisable to its own constituency. The advent of the new dispensation introduced a constitutional framework for re-capacitating South Africa’s post-apartheid state institutions to recentre African law as envisioned by the Constitution. This framework has become the basis on which legislative and judicial efforts could rehabilitate the indigenous value system in the application of African law. The courts of the new South Africa have striven to find the synergy between indigenous values and the Bill of Rights in order to forge areas of compatibility between African culture and human rights. An analysis of this phase in the development of African law, as evidenced by the present study, reveals successes and failures on the part of the courts in their efforts to rehabilitate African law in line with both its value system and the Bill of Rights. These findings lead to the conclusion that whilst South Africa’s legislative and judicial institutions have not yet achieved the envisioned version of African law, there is an adequate constitutional framework through which they could still do so. This study, therefore, recommends that the above institutions, especially the courts, should adopt a theory of re-indigenisation that would guide them as they proceed from the indigenous version of African law which is the basis on which to apply the Bill of Rights. The application of such a theory would ensure that the distorted ‘official’ version of African law which was imposed by colonial and apartheid state institutions is progressively discredited and isolated from the body of South African law and gives way to the version inspired by the Constitution. / Constitutional, International & Indigenous Law / LL.D.

Wetgewing wat onbestaanbaar is met die bepalings van Wet 200 van 1993 as die hoogste reg is nietig tensy geoorloof volgens die maatstawwe van art 33 (1) 1 en die Konstitusionele Hof en die provinsiale en plaaslike afdelings van die Hooggeregshof is bevoeg om dit ongeldig te verklaar. Die beoordeling van die geldigheid van wetgewing waardeur inbreuk gemaak word op 'n Fundamentele Reg of Vryheid in Hoofstuk 3 verleen 1 vereis in eerste instansie die vertolking van die betrokke bepaling van die Hoofstuk. In die lig van die besondere karakter van 'n grondwet en die gebrek aan omlyning van die verleende regte en vryhede 1 moet die vertolking nie volgens geykte metodes geskied nie I maar wel doelgerig aan die hand van die waardes onderliggend tot die Handves as geheel. Waardes wat nie herleibaar is tot die grondwet self nie en die persoonlike filosofiee van die regters behoort die howe egter nie te beinvloed nie. / Legislation inconsistent with the provisions of Act 200 of 1993 as the supreme law is of no force and effect and the Constitutional Court and the provincial and local divisions of the Supreme Court may declare it invalid, unless it complies with the criteria of a permissible limitation under sec 33(1). Before the validity of legislation impinging upon a Fundamental Right or Freedom conferred in Chapter 3 can be considered, the relevant provision of the Chapter must first be interpreted. In view of the special nature of a constitution and the generality of the conferred rights and freedoms, the ordinary methods of interpretation should not be applied. Chapter 3 must be interpreted purposively taking into account the values underlying the Bill of Rights as a whole. Values not founded in the Constitution and the personal philosophies of the judges ought not to influence the courts. / Private Law / LL.M.

Thesis (masters)--University of South Africa, 2001.

Thesis (LLD (Public Law))—University of Stellenbosch, 2009. / ENGLISH SUMMARY: The point of departure of this dissertation is that transformation in South Africa depends on transformative politics – extra-institutional, substantive, oppositional, transformation-oriented politics. One challenge South Africa’s constitution therefore poses to courts is to take account of the impact of adjudication on transformative politics. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the relationship between adjudication and transformative politics within a specific context – adjudication of socio-economic rights cases. This relationship is commonly described in a positive light – either that adjudication of socio-economic rights cases promotes transformative politics by giving impoverished people access to the basic resources required for political participation; or that adjudication of such cases is in itself a space for transformative politics. Although there is much truth in both these descriptions, both under-estimate the extent to which adjudication also limits transformative politics. This dissertation focuses on the extent to which adjudication limits transformative politics – it comprises an analysis of socio-economic rights cases with the aim of showing how adjudication of these cases, despite positive results, also limited transformative politics. The theoretical aspects of this problem are outlined in the first chapter. After a description of the body of case law on which the analysis focuses two chapters follow in which two ways in which adjudication limits transformative politics are investigated. The first traces how courts in socio-economic rights cases participate in discourses about impoverishment that tend to describe the problem as non-political – specifically how courts tend to describe impoverishment as technical rather than political in nature; and how courts implicitly legitimise in their judgments liberal-capitalist views of impoverishment that insist that impoverishment is best addressed through the unregulated market. Then follows a chapter investigating how views of legal interpretation in terms of which legal materials have a certain and determinable meaning that can be mechanically found by courts limit transformative politics by insulating adjudication from critique and emphasising finality in adjudication. Throughout it is shown how courts can mitigate the limiting effects of adjudication, by legitimating the political agency of impoverished people, by using remedies requiring political engagement between opponents and postponing closure in adjudication, and by adopting a different approach to interpretation, that emphasises the pliability and relative indeterminacy of legal materials. Despite this, the conclusion of the dissertation is that courts can never wholly avoid the limiting impact of adjudication on transformative politics, but should rather aim to remain continually aware of it. / AFRIKAANS OPSOMMING: Die uitgangspunt van hierdie proefskrif is dat transformasie in Suid-Afrika afhang van transformatiewe politiek – buite-institusionele, substantiewe, opposisionele, transformasie-gerigte politiek. Een eis wat Suid-Afrika se grondwet daarom aan howe stel, is om ag te slaan op die impak van beregting op transformatiewe politiek. Die doel van hierdie proefskrif is om die verhouding tussen beregting en transformatiewe politiek binne ‘n spesifieke konteks – beregting van sake oor sosio-ekonomiese regte – te ondersoek. Meeste beskouinge van hierdie verhouding beskryf dit in ‘n positiewe lig - óf dat die beregting van sake oor sosio-ekonomiese regte transformatiewe politiek bevorder deur vir verarmde mense toegang tot basiese lewensmiddele te bewerkstellig sodat hulle aan politieke optrede kan deelneem; óf dat beregting van sulke sake opsigself ‘n spasie is vir transformatiewe politiek. Hoewel daar waarheid steek in beide beskrywings, onderskat hulle die mate waartoe beregting ook transformatiewe politiek kan beperk. Hierdie proefskrif fokus op hoe beregting transformatiewe politiek beperk - dit behels ‘n analise van sake oor sosio-ekonomiese regte met die doel om te wys hoe beregting van hierdie sake, ten spyte van kennelik positiewe gevolge ook transformatiewe politiek beperk het. Die teoretiese vergestalting van hierdie probleem word in die eerste hoofstuk beskou. Na ‘n beskrywing van die liggaam van regspraak waarop die analise fokus volg twee hoofstukke waarin twee maniere waarop beregting transformatiewe politiek beperk ondersoek word. Die eerste beskou hoe howe in sake oor sosio-ekonomiese regte deelneem aan diskoerse oor verarming wat neig om hierdie probleem as non-polities te beskryf - spesifiek hoe howe neig om hierdie problem as tegnies eerder as polities van aard te beskryf; en hoe howe liberaal-kapitalistiese sieninge van verarming, ingevolge waarvan verarming deur die ongereguleerde mark aangespreek behoort te word, implisiet in hul uitsprake legitimeer. Dan volg ‘n hoofstuk wat naspeur hoe sieninge van regsinterpretasie ingevolge waarvan regsmateriaal ‘n sekere en vasstelbare betekenis het wat meganies deur howe gevind word, transformatiewe politieke optrede beperk deur die openheid van beregting vir kritiek te beperk en finaliteit in beregting in die hand te werk. Deurgaans word gewys hoe howe die beperkende effek van beregting kan teëwerk, deur die politike agentskap van verarmde mense te legitimeer, deur remedies te gebruik wat politieke onderhandeling tussen opponente bewerkstellig en finale oplossings uitstel, en deur ‘n ander benadering tot interpretasie, wat die buigsaamheid en relatiewe onbepaalbaarheid van regsmateriaal erken, te omarm. Tog is die gevolgtrekking van die proefskrif dat howe nooit die beperkende effek van beregting op transformatiewe politiek geheel kan vermy nie, maar eerder deurgaans daarop bedag moet wees.

This thesis consists of two objectives which divide it into two parts. Thus, part one explores the cyclicity of protest mobilisation in post-Soviet Kazakhstan in the 1992–2009 period and part two investigates the relationship between protest mobilisation and democratisation in the 1990s, a decade marked by early progress in democratisation followed by an abrupt reversal to authoritarianism. Acknowledging the existence of numerous competing explanations of protest cyclicity, the first part of this study utilises four major social movement perspectives – relative deprivation (RD), resource mobilisation (RMT), political opportunity structures (POS) and collective action frames (CAF) – to explain variances in protest mobilisation in Kazakhstan over time and four issue areas. Adopting a small-N case study and process-tracing technique, the thesis’s first research question enquires into which of these four theoretical perspectives has the best fit when seeking to explain protest cyclicity over time. It is hypothesised that the ‘waxing and waning’ of protest activity can best be attributed to the difficulties surrounding the identification and construction of resonant CAFs. However, the study’s findings lead to a rejection of the first hypothesis by deemphasising the role of CAFs in predicting protest cyclicity, and instead support the theoretical predictions of the POS perspective, suggesting the prevalence of structural factors such as the regime’s capacity for repression and shifts in elite alignments. The second research question revolves around variations in protest mobilisation across four issue areas and explores the reasons why socioeconomic grievances mobilised more people to protest than environmental, political and interethnic ones. According to the second hypothesis, people more readily protest around socioeconomic rather than political and other types of grievances due to the lower costs of participation in socioeconomic protests. While the regime’s propensity for repressing political protests could explain the prevalence of socioeconomic protests in the 2000s, the POS perspective’s key explanatory variable failed to account for the prevalence of socioeconomic protests in the early 1990s, resulting in the rejection of the second hypothesis. The second part of the thesis attempts to answer the third research question: How does protest mobilisation account for the stalled transition to democracy in Kazakhstan in the 1990s? Based on the theoretical assumption that instances of extensive protest mobilisation foster democratic transitions, the study’s third research hypothesis posits that transition to democracy in Kazakhstan stalled in the mid-1990s due to the failure of social movement organisations to effectively mobilise the masses for various acts of protest. This assumption receives strong empirical support, suggesting that protest mobilisation is an important facilitative factor in the democratisation process. The thesis is the first to attempt to employ classical social movement theories in the context of post-communist Central Asian societies. Additionally, the study aims to contribute to the large pool of democratisation literature which, until recently (following the colour revolutions), seemed to underplay the role of popular protest mobilisation in advancing transitions to democracy. Finally, the research is based on the author’s primary elite-interview data and content analysis of five weekly independent newspapers.

Four of the contemporary practitioners of the death penalty in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore, performed judicial executions on a regular basis between the years 1975 and 2009. Notwithstanding this similarity, the number of death sentences passed by courts that were subsequently reduced to a term of imprisonment through grants of clemency by the executive (or where the prisoner sentenced to death is exonerated by way of a pardon) varied remarkably between these jurisdictions over this 35-year period: some of these countries commuted the sentences of death row prisoners often, others rarely. In this DPhil thesis, I employ the methodology of comparative criminal justice to explore the discrepancies and similarities in capital clemency practice between these four Southeast Asian jurisdictions, seeking to document the known examples of clemency grants over the course of their modern history, and to investigate the reasons why retentionist countries exercise clemency at vastly different ‘rates’ in finalised capital cases. As clemency and pardon deliberations by the executive are usually performed in secret, academic study of the subject has remained scarce, and the suspected reasons behind death sentence commutations, and their relative frequency, are rarely analysed. My inductive, qualitative study in comparative criminal justice will attempt to address these deficiencies in analysis as they apply to four Southeast Asian countries that continue to practice capital punishment as a form of criminal sanction. Moving beyond Amnesty International’s simplistic observation that ‘nowhere in Asia has the ready availability of such clemency been marked’, I examine the intricacies of the clemency practice in each jurisdiction, and arrive at regional trends and patterns.