| Abstract: | Within the pluralistic legal and judicial system characteristic of contemporary Africa, the issue has always been: What is the place of customary law in the national legal system? Because African States are pursuing a policy of legal and judicial unification (under the guise of law reform), the autonomy and the very existence of indigenous law appear dated. The gradual demise of African indigenous law and courts was foreshadowed in the colonial period, when the strategy of legal and judicial assimilation was worked out and put into effect. Nascent African States have continued to subordinate indigenous law and courts in the name of judicial and legal integration. The techniques deployed to achieve the integrationist goal are the assumption of control over customary courts, the whittling down of indigenous law through legislative acts and judicial decisions, and the observance and enforcement of Islamic law as largely identical with customary law. Implicit in the policy of legal and judicial integration is the assumption that the introduced Western law constitutes a superior legal system. This attitude is manifest in the treatment of Western law as the general law of the land, the non-recognition of village adjudicating bodies, the alternative of opting out of the regime of indigenous law, the rule that the law of Western inspiration must prevail whenever it conflicts with indigenous law, and the abandonment of the teaching of indigenous law in African law faculties and schools. Notes, ref. |
AfricaBib 
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Leiden University catalogue
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