The recognition of African law: the Cape in the nineteenth century

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Periodical article

Title:	The recognition of African law: the Cape in the nineteenth century
Author:	Saunders, C.C.
Year:	1979
Periodical:	African Perspectives
Issue:	2
Pages:	89-95
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	The Cape South Africa United Kingdom
Subjects:	colonization customary law
Abstract:	When the British took over the Cape colony from the Dutch at the turn of the century, they retained Roman-Dutch law as the one system of law for all its peoples, and for much of the nineteenth century the Cape's rulers refused formally to recognise another system of law. But as more and more Bantu-speaking Africans, whose system of customary law was fundamentally different in many major respect from Roman- Dutch, were brought within the expanding colony, the British rulers were more or less forced by the practice of their administration to take account of African legal principles and to recognise that, for scoae of the Africans at least, Roman-Dutch law was not suitable and that African law should, in some focm, be recognised. Parardoxically while there was no recognition of African law as a separate body of law before the 1870s in any Cape-ruled territory, by 1927 segregationists in the South African legislature saw the use of African law as a means of shoring up 'traditional' African society and thereby of countering African demands to participate in the common society as equals. Notes.