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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Legal Challenge of Undoing Apartheid: Reflections on the Enormity and the Enormousness
Author:Latsky, Johan
Year:1990
Periodical:South Africa International
Volume:21
Issue:1
Period:July
Pages:36-45
Language:English
Geographic term:South Africa
Subjects:apartheid
legislation
land law
Law, Human Rights and Violence
Ethnic and Race Relations
Abstract:With the ebb of apartheid laws the conscientious lawyer in South Africa will have to shift the focus of activity from resisting the enormity of such laws to dealing with the enormousness of the process of dismantling and substitution. This paper first explains why it will be an enormous task to identify apartheid laws and to get rid of them. Then it shows the enormity of apartheid laws by describing the large number of 'race zones' in which members of differently classified race 'groups' could acquire rights to land representing different forms of ownership and occupation: scheduled black areas, trust owned released areas and black owned released areas, group areas and the controlled area, and, recently, the so-called development areas. Each area has its own form of land ownership. Besides, the four provincial administrators and the governors of the four independent and five self-governing homelands have legislative and executive jurisdiction in respect of land matters. In each of the race zones there are myriad public law relations existing between local government (white town and city councils, tribal authorities, township councils, etc.) and subject. The conclusion of this description is that rights and freedoms, however deficient and inappropriate, do exist. They are enormously difficult to find, define, uphold and evaluate. In the process of dismantling and substituting apartheid laws, one has to deal carefully and scrupulously with the few rights, acquired under apartheid. Notes, ref.
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