Africa: A Law Commission for Africa

opinion

Professor Antony Allott, Professor of African Law, University of London, and one of theleading experts on African Law points out in his Book,New Essays In African Lawthat: "The legal scene in post colonial Africa is reminiscent, if you will permit the fancy, of a wide beach from which the tide has receded. The eye notices, stranded upon the shore, deposits of extraneous material left behind on the ebb of colonial rule.Here one sees substantial portions of the English, French, Belgian, Portuguese, Spanish or other laws torn away from the main body of the indigenous system as the fundamental and general law of the country and the regulated continuance of traditional African law and judicial institutions."

In his published epock-making BBC documentary, The Africans: A Triple Heritage, the veteran anthropologist and leading Africanist, Professor Ali Mazrui, also points out:"Before European colonisation there were indigenous African justice systems in which the protection of the innocent was the main focus rather than the punishment of the guilty: victim-focus rather than villain-focus.There was a decisive shift from focus on the victim of a crime to focus on the suspect or culprit.Africa's indigenous justice systems also shifted from emphasis on shame to emphasis on guilt.Shame is a subjective state of mind which implies a state of unease and internal anxiety about something which has gone wrong.Guilt, especially in Western terms, is an objective condition which can be ascertained by the law of evidence and which can be measured in terms of degree".

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