This history of African slavery from the fifteenth to the early twentieth centuries examines how indigenous African slavery developed within an international context. Paul E. Lovejoy discusses the medieval Islamic slave trade and the Atlantic trade as well as the enslavement process and the marketing of slaves. He considers the impact of European abolition and assesses slavery's role in African history. The book corrects the accepted interpretation that African slavery was mild and resulted in the slaves' assimilation. Instead, slaves were used extensively in production, although the exploitation methods and the relationships to world markets differed from those in the Americas. Nevertheless, slavery in Africa, like slavery in the Americas, developed from its position on the periphery of capitalist Europe. This new edition revises all statistical material on the slave trade demography and incorporates recent research and an updated bibliography.

P. E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa

Moral Repair examines the ethics and moral psychology of responses to wrongdoing. Explaining the emotional bonds and normative expectations that keep human beings responsive to moral standards and responsible to each other, Margaret Urban Walker uses realistic examples of both personal betrayal and political violence to analyze how moral bonds are damaged by serious wrongs and what must be done to repair the damage. Focusing on victims of wrong, their right to validation, and their sense of justice, Walker presents a unified and detailed philosophical account of hope, trust, resentment, forgiveness, and making amends - the emotions and practices that sustain moral relations. Moral Repair joins a multidisciplinary literature concerned with transitional and restorative justice, reparations, and restoring individual dignity and mutual trust in the wake of serious wrongs.

Moral Repair: Reconstructing Moral Relations after Wrongdoing

Priscilla Hayner 

Routledge, £16.99, pp 340 ISBN 0 415 92477 4

Rating: 

The programme director of the International Centre for Transitional Justice in New York has produced a scholarly yet compellingly written review of the 21 official truth commissions established around the world since 1974 to document state crimes and to address concepts of reparation, reconciliation, and reform.

Hayner starts with an anecdote. “Do you want to remember, or to forget?” she asked a Rwandan government official who had lost every single member of his family in the 1994 genocide. He replied, “We must remember what happened in order to keep it from …

Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity

The South African education system historically has used corporal punishment to maintain discipline. Criticism of its effects led, in 1996, to the banning of this form of punishment. But this legislative intervention did not end the use of corporal punishment in schools. This article offers an explanation for the ongoing use of corporal punishment. It is based on a survey of 16 Durban schools in September and October 1998. Corporal punishment has effectively disappeared from middle-class, formerly white, schools, but is still relatively common in township schools. Reasons for the persistent and illegal use of corporal punishment include the absence of alternatives, the legacy of itarian education practices and the belief that corporal punishment is necessary for orderly education to take place. A neglected explanation is that corporal punishment persists because parents use it in the home and support its use in school. There is a tension between the prohibition of corporal punishment in schools and the increase in parent involvement in the affairs of schools. 
(South African Journal of Education: 2001 21(4): 292-299)

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Corporal punishment in South African schools : a neglected explanation for its existence

Book review of  An Introduction to the International Criminal Court  by  William A. Schabas and published by Cambridge University Press (Cambridge), 2001. (406 pp.)

An Introduction to the International Criminal Court

International law: a South African perspective is the only book currently available that addresses international law from a South African perspective. The book refers to international and South African sources in order to provide a study of both international law and international law as it is applied in South Africa.

International law : a South African perspective

This article considers the issue of reparation for slavery and the claim for reparation advanced by African states against the West. The paper begins by briefly outlining the principles relating to State responsibility and reparation in international law, and gives an overview of the recognised forms of legal reparation that exist. The paper then provides some exploratory discussion on the issue of reparation for slavery. It is exploratory in the sense that this is a matter which has received scant attention in recent international law literature. As regards the current call for reparation, the author identifies the weaknesses of legal claims within the existing international law paradigm of State responsibility. As an alternative, the paper considers ways in which political strategies might be employed to achieve reparation. In particular, the author aims to align calls for reparation for slavery with existing claims to development by African states, as a means by which a moral global economy can be achieved. In this regard, the author considers the feasibility of the different forms of reparation, insofar as they are able to underpin and advance the idea of a moral global economy. The paper also briefly examines the issue of reparation for colonialism and considers how the insights as regards reparation for slavery might be useful in relation to reparation claims for

Historical Injustice and International Law: An Exploratory Discussion of Reparation for Slavery

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has sparked immense interest since it opened its doors in 2002. As one noted commentator puts it: 'Whether or not one is supportive of the International Criminal Court, any knowledgeable specialist has to admit that in the history of public international law it is a truly extraordinary phenomenon'. It may just be 'the most important institutional innovation since the founding of the United Nations'.

The International Criminal Court that Africa wants

This article assesses the African Union’s (AU) concerns about Article 16 of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). It seeks to articulate a clearer picture of the law and politics of deferrals within the context of the AU’s repeated calls to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC, or the Council) to invoke Article 16 to suspend the processes initiated by the ICC against President Omar Al Bashir of Sudan. The UNSC’s failure to accede to the AU request led African States to formally withhold cooperation from the ICC in respect to the arrest and surrender of the Sudanese leader. Given the AU’s continued concerns, and the current impasse, fundamental questions have arisen about the Council’s authority to exercise, or not exercise, its deferral power. This culminated into a November 2009 African proposal for an amendment to the Rome Statute to empower the UN General Assembly to act should the UNSC fail to act on a deferral request after six months. Although ICC States Parties have so far shown limited public support for the AU’s proposed amendment to the deferral provision, this article examines its merits because a failure to engage the “Article 16 problem” could impact international accountability efforts in the Sudan, and further damage the ICC’s credibility in Africa. This unresolved issue also has wider significance given that the matters underlying the tension – how ICC prosecutions may be reconciled with peacemaking initiatives and the role and power of the Council in ICC business – will likely arise in future situations from around the world.

Assessing the African Union Concerns about Article 16 of the Rome State of the International Criminal Court

This paper considers the decision by the African Union (AU) to expand the jurisdiction of the African Court of Justice and Human Rights to act as an international criminal court with jurisdiction over the international crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, as well as several transnational crimes. At an AU meeting from 14-15 May 2012 a draft protocol to effect that expansion was approved and has been recommended to the AU Assembly for adoption.
The short time frame which the AU has provided for the complex task of drafting the protocol occurs against the backdrop of the fractured relationship between the AU and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The process of expanding the African Court's jurisdiction is fraught with complexities and has implications on an international, regional and domestic level. All these implications need to be considered, particularly the impact on domestic laws and obligations, and the relationship between African states parties to the Rome Statute of the ICC, the ICC itself and the African Court.

Max Du Plessis

Papers

International law : a South African perspective

Historical Injustice and International Law: An Exploratory Discussion of Reparation for Slavery

The International Criminal Court that Africa wants

Assessing the African Union Concerns about Article 16 of the Rome State of the International Criminal Court

Implications of the AU decision to give the African Court jurisdiction over international crimes