One of the outstanding features of the South African Constitution is the well-articulated concept of administrative justice. It is to be expected that a modern constitutional state with an enormous social reconstruction programme like that of post-apartheid South Africa must have a sophisticated mechanism for the maintenance of administrative justice. The immediate past experience of apartheid under which the administrative process was devoted to the victimization of a large section of the population has also meant that every constitutional means possible in the arduous task of social reconstruction must be deployed towards the declared objective of the evolution of a humane and just administrative process. It was therefore not surprising that the post-apartheid constitutions considered the availability of administrative justice for citizens as one of their foremost civil liberties. Under the common law, the concept of administrative justice is generally associated with the notion of natural justice. Recent developments, however, have tended to narrow the concept down to the idea of fairness. The most remarkable proof of this development is the emergence of the doctrine of legitimate expectations, under which the courts have been able to come to the aid of persons who would have in previous situations been unable to obtain redress in matters where the application of administrative discretion is of paramount importance.

Rwanda, since the genocide of 1994, has had immense difficulty in dealing with the past. It has pursued the model of prosecutions without being able to bring many of the alleged perpetrators before the courts. The article examines why this is so, as well as the political situation in Rwanda in the context of the country's human rights record, to determine whether sufficient weight is being given to truth, reconciliation, peace and stability. The proposed new gacaca community courts are examined to determine whether the stated government intention of using these structures to deal with genocide cases outweighs the potential problems they may cause. The article suggests that as so many years have elapsed since the genocide of 1994 that the authorities cannot, and should not, seek to prosecute all those accused of participating in the slaughter because attempting to prosecute all those in detention may cause more harm than good.

A brief glance at Africa would suggest that the methods adopted to deal with conflict prevention have achieved little success. It is clear that there are complex causes of conflict and that one cannot view conflict in a narrow sense, but must take account of political, economic and social factors to truly understand its causes and process. There is evidence that human rights violations predate conflicts: thus arbitrary arrests and detentions, oppression of political opposition groups and individuals, difficulties in socio-economic conditions, and additional border controls often increase during such times. Monitoring the situation of human rights over a period of time can therefore provide indicators of impending disputes. Conversely, human rights violations are also caused by conflicts. Yet, human rights and conflicts are often dealt with separately and this is evidenced in the practice of the UN as well as the Organization of African Unity (OAU).

This article is in two parts. The first part analyses, and largely applauds, the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000, the latest in a series of enactments designed to curb corruption in Nigeria over the last thirty years. The second part looks at the social environment within which corruption operates. It points out that in the past the environment was such that anti-corruption measures were bound to fail, but it concludes, in optimistic vein, that the recent return to civilian rule has created a climate in which the new Act is likely to have an effect in the fight against corruption.

The participation of local communities in the management of Cameroon's huge forest resources appears to be one of the most imponderable and enigmatic issues confronting contemporary policy-makers. This is because forest resource access and tenure policies in Cameroon have, since the colonial period, generally been hegemonic in character. This situation was further accentuated with the advent of national governments. On the eve of independence and even beyond, African governments were so concerned with political rights that they did not give much thought to any other rightscertainly not to what has become known as the right of local communities to participate in natural resource management. It was quite easy for Africans to conceive of rights solely in terms of the political rights of individuals. There was thus an alleged incompatibility between riparian community rights to participate in forest management and respect for individual rights.

The Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act in South Africa seeks to make the constitutional prohibition of discrimination as effective as possible. The achievement of this aim is, however, likely to be frustrated by several factors, including the legacy of apartheid, deficiencies in the formal statutory guarantees and the judicial interpretation of these, and the lack of effective enforcement mechanisms. As a result, the attempt to clamp down on racial discrimination has removed from the constitutional guarantee much of its potential force.

South Africa is often characterized as a highly religious country since many South Africans consider their religious beliefs to be central to their lives. Although religion is widely believed to be a “non-issue”, these strong religious identifications might, however, play a role in the apparent ethnic resurgence. Consequently, the religious diversity of South Africa should be appropriately accommodated in the post-apartheid regime so as to prevent religion-based conflict.

The former (and late lamented) Chief Justice of South Africa, Justice Ismail Mohammed, once observed that:

“The constitution of a nation is not simply a statute which mechanically defines the structures of government and the relations between the government and the governed, it is a ‘mirror of the national soul’, the identification of the ideals and aspirations of a nation, the articulation of the values binding its people and disciplining its government.”

Further, as van der Vyer has warned, “. . . a superimposed constitutional formulae or constitutional arrangements that . . . do not address the real causes of discontent, are sure to generate their own legitimacy crisis.” It follows that the development of an appropriate procedure for constitution-making is of the greatest practical importance. This short comment seeks to examine critically the much-publicized efforts in Zimbabwe to develop a new autochthonous constitution and to draw some lessons therefrom.

Articles 6(e) and 15(1–4) of the ECOWAS Revised Treaty (1993) provide for the establishment of a Court of Justice of the Community. These provisions should, however, be read along with those of the Protocol on the Community Court of Justice initialled in 1991. Attempts have been made to analyse various aspects of the institutions of the Community, including the Court of Justice. While Bankole Thompson examined the legal problems of the economic integration in West Africa, Kofi Oteng Kufuor attempted to look at the Court of Justice from the angle of compliance with its judgments by member states. Denakin, for his part, appraised generally the prospects of the Court.

Plant variety protection has come to the fore in the wake of the adoption of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement). TRIPS generally imposes the patentability of inventions, whether products or processes, in all fields of technology and specifically mandates the introduction of a form of legal protection on plant varieties. Article 27.3(b) thus states that member states “shall provide for the protection of plant varieties either by patents or by an effective sui generis system or by any combination thereof.”

DEFINING THE LIMITS OF PERMISSIBLE EMPLOYMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST PERSONS LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS IN SOUTH AFRICA: HOFFMAN V. SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS [2000] 12 BLLR 1365.

Perhaps the most positive and exciting aftermath of the apartheid era is the construction of the new South Africa upon the foundation of a Constitution and other legal instruments that are unanimous and unambiguous in two respects. The first is in their proscription of unfair discrimination and the second is in their permission of statutory and other measures aimed at eliminating the effects of past discrimination on those groups of persons who were at the receiving end of same. The provisions of these instruments as well as their tenor and spirit reveal an unmistakable national resolve to break from a culture of racial discrimination to a constitutionally protected culture of human rights for South Africans of all ages, classes and colours. Without doubt, the most important of those provisions is the equality clause of the Bill of Rights contained in the second chapter of the Constitution. This probably follows from a realization of the fact that equality is fundamental to “the maintenance and propagation of human rights in a democratic body politic, particularly in an acutely divided society” such as South Africa.

LAND ACQUISITION AMENDMENT ACT, 2000 (ZIMBABWE)

Since Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 the issue of land reform and, in particular, the issue of land acquisition and redistribution has seldom been off the political agenda. For the first ten years of independence there were constitutional constraints on the acquisition of land for resettlement purposes, but the National Land Policy of 1990 set out plans for an accelerated programme of resettlement. In order to achieve its ambitious targets the government of Zimbabwe saw the need to strengthen its powers of compulsory acquisition both by amending section 16 of the Constitution (which provided strong protection against the compulsory acquisition of property) and by enacting the Land Acquisition Act to provide a statutory basis for the new policy. These reforms were extremely controversial both inside and outside the country and a clause excluding the right to fair compensation for expropriated land was dropped partly in response to international pressure.

In July 2000, several months after the United Nations produced an independent report citing the failures of the organization in relation to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda (the Carlsson Report), the Organization of African Unity's (OAU) Summit in Lomé, Togo, was presented with a several-hundred page report from its International Panel of Eminent Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events (IPEP). While the Carlsson Report focused exclusively on the responsibility of the UN, the IPEP had a wide mandate to examine the situation which led to the genocide and the failures of the Genocide Convention, and to make recommendations for redress and action to prevent it happening again. Similarly, although the UN document does acknowledge that the OAU failed to prevent the genocide, attributing this to a lack of resources and political will, the IPEP Report is more forceful in its condemnation of the influence and responsibility of several European states and the USA. The Panel considered the part played by these states as essential to an understanding of the genocide, despite the fact that its intention was not to determine the guilt of various actors. This note provides a descriptive summary of the contents of the Report.

CHALLENGING RESTRICTIONS ON THE RIGHT TO PROTECTION OF THE LAW IN ZIMBABWE.

In June 2000, a general election was held in Zimbabwe. Of the 120 common roll constituencies, 62 were won by the ruling party, ZANU(PF) and 57 by the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). The MDC alleged that the general election campaign was marred by widespread violence, intimidation and illegal practices. As a result proceedings were instituted in the High Court challenging the outcome of the electoral process in 37 constituencies. The hearings were due to commence in January 2001. On 8 December the President issued the Electoral Act (Modification) (No. 3) Notice, 2000 (SI 318/2000), which purported to justify the validation of the election results by reference to a series of assertions.