It is a happy coincidence indeed that in the 40th year of publication, the Editors of this Journal have had the privilege of publishing a liber amicorum for Professor James Read. In 1996 he retired from 40 years of teaching in the University of London, since 1974 as Professor of Comparative Public Law with special reference to Africa, a Chair which he retains in an Emeritus capacity. It has been a formidable task to attempt to do justice to the work of this “able, patient, effective and thoughtful scholar” (to adopt the words of two of our contributors) to African legal studies. However, this volume contains essays by colleagues and erstwhile students upon subjects which will at least in part reflect the richness and diversity of James Read’s interests.

This special number of the Journal of African Law has a dual function. First, commemorates 40 years of continuous production of the only learned journal devoted exclusively to African law. And secondly, it is presented as a tribute to the signal achievement of Professor James Read of the School of Oriental and African Studies in devoting himself to the study and advancement of African law, both at the School and elsewhere. The two successes run in parallel. Often their lines intersect. Jim Read directly and indirectly has made an enormous contribution to the expansion of the notion of African law since those early days, an expansion which has fed back into the concerns and the range of materials which the contents list of the Journal now displays.

Twenty-four years ago Henry Morris and Jim Read, in Indirect Rule and the Search for Justice, provided a wealth of illuminating information about the history of the legal systems of the East African colonial states. But an even greater merit of their book than its detailed data is its coherence and depth of analysis. These result from their adherence to a constant reference point, the “search for justice”. This concept may still be useful in the study of law in Africa today.

Strong criticisms and statements of concern about corruption and governance in Africa are being voiced more and more often. What is highly significant is that increasingly open and fierce criticism is being voiced by commentators in and from Africa itself. It is this fact that emboldens me to offer the following analysis and set of proposals for addressing the issues of good governance and aid in Africa. I shall concentrate principally on Anglophone Africa in which Jim Read did most of his work.

One of the important characteristics of the Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, 1992, is the prominence it gives to the constitutional protection of the rights of men, women and children who live for a larger part of their lives as families. Although there are passing references to the family, that word is not defined by the Constitution, but the absence of a definition need not be regarded as evidence of non-recognition of the concept of family in Ghana society. Few will disagree widi the proposition that the basis of every society from the most primitive to the most complicated is the family. As an institution it is of great antiquity.

It gives me great pleasure to contribute to this liber amicorum for my colleague and friend James Read. I wish him a happy retirement though I suspect that his hunger for research and discovery into African law will continue. I met Jim some 36 years ago when I joined the School of Oriental and African Studies as a research officer in African law attached to the Restatement of African Law Project of which Tony Allott was the Director. Like me, Jim was then a young student of African law, being taught and coached by the pioneer of the subject, Tony Allott. Again, like me, Jim also specialized in East Africa and in the early 1960s we exchanged notes and ideas and collaborated on research into the customary and other laws of Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. Naturally Jim took a special interest in my Restatement of African Law in Kenya and I am forever grateful for his encouragement and enthusiasm during the research and afterwards, when the Kenya Government decided to go further than the Restatement and integrate its marriage, divorce and succession laws. This article tells the story of the establishment of the two Kenya Commissions on the subject and asks whether such unification or integration is possible.

On 17 May, 1995, the Malawi National Assembly adopted a democratic constitution. In terms of Malawi’s post-colonial history, the adoption of the constitution was an unprecedented event. For a period of 30 years, Malawi had been subjected to a one-party dictatorship led by Dr Hastings Banda. Supported over the years by the West because of its anti-communist rhetoric, the Banda regime found itself abandoned with the ending of the Cold War and the collapse of apartheid in South Africa. Pressure from internal and external groups led to a referendum on the oneparty state in June 1993 which the Banda regime lost and to the first multi-party elections in May 1994 which the regime also lost. A day before the 1994 elections, the Malawi National Assembly adopted a Provisional Constitution for a period of 12 months. Pursuant to section 212 of the Provisional Constitution, the National Constitutional Conference was held in February 1995 for the purpose of making recommendations to the National Assembly on a permanent constitution. Rather than replace or repeal the Provisional Constitution, the National Assembly decided in April 1995 to make modest amendments to it in order to address some of the more blatant deficiencies that were identified at the Constitutional Conference. During the coming years, the Law Commission will make a detailed study of the entire document, make recommendations to the Minister of Justice and, it is hoped, address some of the obvious drafting oversights.

The new Constitution of Malawi came into force provisionally on 18 May, 1994. It replaced the Republican Constitution of 1966 which had been amended in 1993 in order to allow for the re-introduction of a multi-party democracy, the reincorporation, as an interim measure, of the Bill of Rights as contained in the Independence Constitution of 1964, and the abolition of the life presidency created under section 10(3) of the 1966 Constitution as amended in 1970 so as to provide that Dr Banda was to be president of the Republic for his lifetime.

The small East-Central African countries of Rwanda and Burundi have been in the news lately because of the extreme violence they have been and are experiencing. While many observers have interpreted these conflicts in strictly ethnic terms, pitting Hutu against Tutsi, they are in fact political: at stake is power, the control over the state as a principal means of accumulation and reproduction of a social class. This struggle in the context of profound destabilization has given rise to extraordinary forms of constitutional engineering, which have attempted to legitimize the assumption of power by small minorities.

In the past few years the High Court of Tanzania has produced some bold decisions demonstrating an impressively firm stand by the judiciary in its role of dispensing justice without fear of executive threat or intimidation. Most of these decisions came after the Bill of Rights, enacted into the Constitution in 1984, became justiciable in 1989 and widened the scope of judicial control of executive powers.

Writing about any constitution is tricky business and that of Zambia is no exception. Four constitutions in 32 years hardly represents a settled state of affairs, and an end, or even a stopping place of long duration, does not appear in sight. This is, however, an interesting, even exciting period in Zambia’s brief constitutional history. The subject cries out for an examination of where the country has been, where it is, and where, at least in the opinion of these observers, it ought to be heading.

We are happy to undertake this brief assessment in the context of recognition of the career of Professor J.S. Read. This able, patient, effective, and thoughtful scholar has been a mentor to generations of African lawyers, including Zambians. To both of us Jim Read has been a warm and generous friend, from time to time a wise counsellor who has contributed much to our own efforts.

In the Introduction to this volume, brief reference was made to James Read’s work as General Editor of Law Reports of the Commonwealth. The series includes cases from every part of the Commonwealth, but the purpose of this brief note is to draw particular attention to some recent cases reported from African jurisdictions, some of which have no up-to-date series of law reports of their own.