Beschreibung
This book makes life unusually easy for
anyone who wants to know about African indigenous laws,
and seeks to encourage further research into the laws that
regulate the lives of millions of Africans. For, in spite
of colonialism, military decrees and the authoritative modernity of
state civil or common law, African indigenous laws have not
fallen into abeyance.
African indigenous laws, like Roman law before Justinian
codification, was mos maiorum, the path of the ancestors.
Accordingly, Roman law, English common law and African indigenous
law are the great legal creation of pagan human beings whereas other
ancient systems of laws such as Judaism, Sharia,
Hindu, Adat laws, were religious in origin.
The Bibliography ranges widely over topics as diverse as
cultural property, coups d’état and the plunder of
antiquities, to formalities of marriage, child betrothal, divorce,
sororate marriage, levirate marriage, to succession and inheritance,
oral will, and administration of the estate.
A word of warning to all those who normally skip reading
Prefaces: the two here, one by Professor Antony Allott, the
other by Professor Manfred Hinz, are essential reading. And as
Professor Hinz writes: this bibliography `is an indispensable tool
for all who are in one way or the other concerned
with customary law, as lecturer, researcher, law applier and
law reformer…’
`Those of us with a common interest in possible new
strategies for successful management of heterosexual
relationship and reproduction will find Dr. Okupa’s book full of
possible alternatives. Though, as Dr. Okupa says, minds like parachutes
should be open; there are other ways of doing
this and in defiance of persecution and prejudice, they
work.’
Dr Germaine Greer, University of Cambridge
`This unusual bibliography crosses boundaries of countries
and disciplines. It will be an invaluable aid to many
different lines of research.’
Professor William Twining, University College London
Effa Okupa is a Research Fellow in the
Faculty of Law, University of Namibia.