The most common consumer complaint in Ghana now is that prices of consumer goods are too dear. It is common knowledge that prices of basic goods change almost every month. Life in Ghana shows that price control has been one of the difficult problems that successive governments have faced since the termination of colonial rule.

The primary intention of this article is to present a descriptive account of price control legislation in Ghana, in the hope that it will interest as well as be informative to the reader.

Four interrelated reforms in the private law of Ghana were promulgated by the ruling Provisional National Defence Council (P.N.D.C.) on 14 June, 1985: the Intestate Succession Law, 1985 (P.N.D.C.L. Ill); the Customary Marriage and Divorce (Registration) Law, 1985 (P.N.D.C.L. 112); the Administration of Estates (Amendment) Law, 1985 (P.N.D.C.L. 113); and the Head of Family (Accountability) Law, 1985 (P.N.D.C.L. 114). The Intestate Succession Law radically changes the law of inheritance, and constitutes the most extensive legislative reform ever made in the private law of Ghana. The Administration of Estates (Amendment) Law is a minor consequential enactment. The other two Laws are directed primarily to other issues, but bear on the Intestate Succession Law in minor aspects which will be mentioned later.

This comment does not seek to provide a detailed textual analysis of the Law, but merely to consider its provenance and general significance in the development of Ghanaian property law.

Malaŵi has two sets of courts which run completely parallel to each other. One set forms the Judicial Branch of the Government and consists of magistrates’ courts (which have original civil and criminal jurisdiction only), the High Court (which has unlimited original and appellate civil and criminal jurisdiction) and the Supreme Court of Appeal (which has original criminal jurisdiction for contempt of court but otherwise has appellate civil and criminal jurisdiction). The Supreme Court of Appeal is a final appellate court in this set of courts. These courts are here called Received Courts because they apply the received (English) common law as the basic law.

The other set of courts is a section of the Ministry of Justice (which is part of the Executive Branch of the Government). The set consists of Traditional Courts of Grades A and B, the Traditional Appeal Courts (which hear and determine appeals from Traditional Courts of Grades A and B), District Traditional Courts, Regional Traditional Courts and the National Traditional Appeal Court (which hears and determines appeals from Traditional Appeal Courts, District Traditional Courts and Regional Traditional Courts). The civil and criminal jurisdiction of Traditional Courts is set out in the warrant establishing the Court and is supplemented from time to time by published ministerial orders under the authority of the Traditional Courts Act (the 1962 Act). The National Traditional Appeal Court is a final appellate court in this set of courts.

In the history of modern Africa the issue of self-determination has always been of special significance. For a better part of a century and in some cases more, almost the entire continent was subject to colonisation by various European powers. The end of the Second World War and the subsequent adoption of the United Nations Charter, incorporating the principle of self-determination, heralded a new phase for the African colonies in international relations. Defined in its simplest terms, self-determination is the principle by virtue of which a people freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development. Selfdetermination is in essence the right of self-government. A territory exercises the right by either opting to establish itself as an independent state, associating with an existing state or by accepting to be integrated into an existing state. Self-determination so defined was thus used as the basis for decolonisation in Africa and provided the foundations for equal statehood for the former colonies of Africa in international relations.

After decolonisation, the issue of self-determination still persists in Africa attracting sentiments and implications well exemplified by the conflicts Over Biafra and Katanga in the 1960s and currently in Eritrea, the Tigray province of Ethiopia and the Southern Sudan. The very successful propagation of self-determination as the right of every people to self-government by African nationalists during the colonial days seems to have left behind a legacy of a question for post-independence Africa—is the ideal of self-determination