INTRODUCTION

In writing about Africa and the International Criminal Court (ICC) over the past two decades, the temptation to allude to Epic narratives has been ever-present, and one in particular has haunted our collective reflections on the subject. We have written about ‘stormy years’, ‘being caught between Scylla and Charybdis’ and on more than one occasion, an early draft has had the phrase ‘the Odyssey continues’ lurking somewhere in the text, if not the title. Recently, employing Homer's Epic became more difficult, as the Odyssey appeared to be headed towards a precipitous and premature end when African states started making plans for their collective withdrawal from the Rome Statute. While threats of a mass withdrawal have simmered – in the end only Burundi followed through (South Africa demurred) – there seems to be little hope of a rapprochement. In fact, recent developments in the Afghanistan situation suggest another storm might be on the horizon.

On reflection, in our writings at least, it has been unclear who was steering the ship: was the hero of the story the ICC navigating the waters (and avoiding the Siren calls) of international politics, or were African states navigating the waters of international law? In this chapter we want to focus specifically on the role that the ICC has played, not as hero but as protagonist, in Africa over the past two decades. We do so, jumping mythologies, with the intention of neither burying nor praising the ICC, but in order to reflect critically on the role it has played in the demise of this once promising relationship, and we consider whether the story might have turned out differently (or might yet still). For, while much of the blame is currently placed solely at the feet of African states and their hostility towards specific investigations (particularly against heads of state), this chapter aims to show that: (1) the fractures within this relationship have come about as a result of the actions (and inactions) of the ICC and its supporters; and (2) as far as African states’ complaints are concerned, these were general concerns they had about the ICC that were present at its founding in 1998, and these concerns have come to be realised, for the worse, with each passing year.

INTRODUCTION

When the compilers of Justinian's Digest in the sixth century CE reflected on the origins of Roman law as a legal order, they decided that the topic was of such importance that it had to be placed at the very front of the Digest, in book 1 title 2, directly after the introductory title in which central concepts such as ‘justice’ and ‘law’ were explained. In compiling this title, they relied on the works of two Roman jurists. The first, the enigmatic Gaius, a jurist of the mid-second century CE who, in a book (now lost) on the Twelve Tables (lex Duodecim Tabularum), wrote: ‘Since I am aiming to give an interpretation of the ancient laws, I have concluded that I must trace the law of the Roman people from the very beginning of their city. This is not because I like making excessively wordy commentaries, but because I can see that in every subject a perfect job is one whose parts hang together properly.’ While there is no doubt some Greek philosophy latent in this statement, it is not the main focus of our discussion here. For us, as for Gaius, it is important to stress that origins matter. No subject can be understood properly without a fundamental appreciation of its history. This fundamental principle is one the Romans understood only too well and, in this time of ‘presentism’, has become more important than ever.

But the compilers did not rely solely on Gaius’ book on the Twelve Tables. We do not know why. Instead, they chose to populate the rest of the title with a long passage from Pomponius’ Enchiridion (Manual). Much has been written about this account of the history of Roman law, written by a Roman jurist who lived during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. As the only comprehensive narrative concerning the development of Roman law, it has become a cornerstone for subsequent understanding of the nature and contours of the Roman legal order. And although not unproblematic, given the absence of corroborating evidence, it has left an enduring imprint – it is, for example, central to Edward Gibbon's account of Roman law in his seminal Decline and Fall.

The English language has been present in South Africa since the end of the eighteenth century. Although regional varieties were established as part of the nineteenth-century development of South African English (SAfE) as its own variety, the general consensus has been that since the mid-twentieth century the ancestral ‘settler’ variety of SAfE has shown a high degree of regional homogeneity and only a limited set of regionalisms. This chapter investigates more recent developments in this regard, drawing on an acoustic analysis of data from upper-middle class male and female speakers of General SAfE from the three largest urban conurbations of South Africa: Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. The focus is on vowel quality and the results include (1) greater centralization of KIN in Durban (2) a Cape Town-centered process of TRAP and DRESS lowering accompanied by STRUT backing (the so-called Reverse Short Front Vowel Shift in SAfE) (3) clearly diphthongal variants of PRICE in Johannesburg and Cape Town in comparison to Durban and (4) backed and lowered variants of GOAT in Johannesburg and Durban as compared to Cape Town. Overall the results suggest a growing degree of regional differentiation in South African English.