Imagine a "new South Africa" in which, to borrow an idea from a former bureaucrat of the US State Department, history has come to an end.3 A new society in which class, race and gender are no longer necessary categories to define the social phenomenon. South Africa will be, then, the "terrestrial paradise". However, I am afraid to remind the reader that in this particular African country, history has not come to an end. This country experiences the most open and rude expression of struggle (class, race and gender), and it is difficult to foresee that in this period of transition, history or the struggle, will come to an end. Popular justice vis ei vis state justice is, perhaps, one of the best examples in which the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressors is manifested. But the popular justice that I am thinking of, is that particular experience of "people’s legality" that has emerged in South Africa since the popular revolts of the mid-1980s. It could have its origins in African (customary) traditions (Bapela, 1987), but the cultural experience that emerged during the last decade went beyond its traditionalist roots (Suttner, 1986). Thus, the distinctive element of popular justice is that it has been ingrained in a democratic movement for empowering the people. What people?4 Whose justice? In the specific context of South Africa, by people I understand the working class and working classes, unemployed and marginal sectors, and different social sectors that are struggling for equality (ie the youth, women, gays and lesbians, and others). By justice, I mean the development of a new legality that will take into consideration the many gains that have been achieved within the Western legal system of "rights and obligations" (Pashukanis, 1978:100), and that goes beyond that model in the construction of a democratic society with wider social participation. So far, it has been in South Africa’s black townships that an incipient expression of popular justice has emerged.6 The 1980s people’s courts represented a synthesis of a popular project defining its own structures of legality. State repression over these popular structures did not represent the end of the project. In contrast to other points of view that have viewed this experience as a prefigurative enterprise that did not accomplish its aims (see in general Allison, 1990), I argue that the experience of popular justice of the 1980s laid the foundation for a (long term) project leading towards a radical conception of democracy (Laclau, 1990:chapter 6). / Occasional papers (University of the Witwatersrand. Centre for Applied Legal Studies) ; v. 15
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:rhodes/vital:30116 |
| Date | 03 1900 |
| Creators | Nina, Daniel |
| Publisher | Centre for Applied Legal Studies, University of the Witwatersrand |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text, book |
| Format | 45 pages, pdf |
| Rights | University of the Witwatersrand, No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission from the publisher |
Page generated in 0.0023 seconds