Department of Public Law

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Lawyers in Neoliberalism. Authority’s Professional Supplicants or Society’s Amateurish Conscience?
(University of Dar es Salaam, 206-07-15) Shivji, Issa G.
The Mystery of Capital has the po- tential to create a new, enormously beneficial revolution, for it addresses the single greatest source of failure in the Third World and ex-communist countries — the lack of a rule of law that upholds private property and provides a framework for enterprise. It should be compulsory reading for all in charge of the wealth of nations.
Peasants and Class Alliances
(Taylor & Francis, 1975) Shivji, Issa G.
The conditions under which capitalism has penetrated African countries have not produced the kind of capitalist development that occurred in Europe. It is out of this recognition that an analysis must be undertaken of the process of differentiation of the peasantry. While some ranks of the peasantry protect their interests by fraternising with the bureaucracy, the poor peasantry is exploited by both internal and external dominating classes. The concept of the worker‐peasant alliance thus grows from an analysis of both the working class and poor peasantry in relation to other classes, from their role in social production, and their objective interests in conflict with imperialism and its local class allies. At the same time class struggle and class alliance require indispensably a political ideology and political organisation based on proletarian class consciousness.
Agrarian Problems and Development
(University of Dar es Salaam, 1980-08-12) Shivji, Issa G.
Law, State and the Working Class in Tanzania
(African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1989) Shivji, Issa G.; Nimtz, August
The Concept of Human Rights in Africa
(CODESRIA, 1989) Shivji, Issa G.
Hitherto the human rights debate in Africa has concentrated on the legal and philosophical. The author, Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, here moves the debate to the social and political planes. He attempts to reconceptualise human rights ideology from the standpoint of the working people in Africa. He defines the approach as avoiding the pitfalls of the liberal perspective as being absolutist in viewing human rights as a central question and the rights struggle as the backbone of democratic struggles. The author maintains that such a study cannot be politically neutral or intellectually uncommitted. Both the critique of dominant discourse and the reconceptualisation are located within the current social science and jurisprudential debates.
Time to Reopen a National Debate on Democracy
(1990-12-12) Shivji, Issa G.
The article sharply distinguishes between democracy and multiparty system and argues that while the later may be necessary it is not sufficient to constitute democratic politics. The article argues for a protracted democratisation process of entering multiparty system so as to ensure that the multiparty system is based on a national consensus which would underlie a new constitutional order. Since then we have had two general elections and the recent tragic events all of which show that we are dangerously slipping into narrow nationlaism and parochialism. Several weeks ago President Mwinyi said that the Government was intending to form a commission which would monitor the views of the people in the current debate on oneparty vs. multiparty. However, he said, the Government would welcome any suggestion on a different method of concluding the debate. It is in the light of this invitation that I humbly offer my views. Origin and Content of the Debate The method that we eventually adopt to arrive at a decision on the various issues raised by the debate depends partly on the position we take on the origin and the content of the current debate. Examination of various contributions which have been made so far reveal at least two broad positions. The first position sees the number of parties whether oneparty or multiparty as the central issue in the existing debate. It probably also holds that the immediate origins of the debate lie in two sources: changes in Eastern Europe on the one hand, and the pressures from Western Europe to adopt a multiparty system, on the other. Those who explicitly or impliedly subscribe to this position, whether in favour of oneparty or multiparty, use the experiences and theories of the oneparty Eastern and the multiparty Western Europe as their points of departure and reference as well as in justification and rationalisation of their views. The second position holds that the central issue in the debate is the question of democracy and that the party system is only an aspect of democracy. Furthermore, the debate on democracy has been an on going process within our country albeit with ups and downs. The most recent example of such a debate was the constitutional debate of 1983/84. This position therefore tends to belittle the changes in Eastern Europe as having little to do with the current debate in Tanzania.
The democracy Debate in Africa: Tanzania
(Taylor & Francis, 1991-03) Shivji, Issa G.
Eighth Amendment Fiasco at Law
(University of Dar es Salaam, 1992-04-23) Shivji, Issa G.
The proposed Bills being presented to the National Assembly at the end of this month following the adoption of multi-party system raise a number of issues. The first issue is the context and the circumstances under which these Bills are being presented to the Assembly. It is not clear from the Bills or the political statements made by various leaders whether what is proposed in them constitutes interim measures for a transition to a new multi-party constitution or that these proposals are indeed what would be the final shape of the multi-party democracy in Tanzania. Lack of clarity on this issue arises primarily because the Government has so far issued no statement, let alone a White Paper, on their attitude to the Nyalali Report.
Intellectuals at the Hill
(Dar es Salaam University Press, 1993) Shivji, Issa G.
Intellectuals in Politics
(1993-01-30) Shivji, Issa G.
Sokoine Memorial Lecture
(Sokoine University of Agriculture, 1993-04-16) Shivji, Issa G.
The Rule of Law and Ujamaa in the Ideological Formation of Tanzania
(SAGE Publications, 1995-06) Shivji, Issa G.
The article investigates the extent to which the ideology of rule of law serves to mobilize consent in the Tanzanian formation. It reviews the position in the extant literature which argues that the failure of the rule of law as a legitimizing ideology in African political formations is largely because of the incapacity of the African ruling classes to sustain such a project given the dependent or neo-colonial economic conditions of their societies. The article questions whether this is the sole explanation and puts forward the position that the rule of law ideology is not necessarily resonant with the world view of popular classes in Tanzania. In this regard, it is argued that the Western debate on the rule of law as an 'unqualified good' and the focus on rights struggle are not uncritically transferable to an African situation. It calls for an intellectual break from the current celebration of liberalism, constitutionalism and human rights as the only, or even the principal, alternative ideologies for a popular project of social emancipation and national liberation.
Towards a New Constitutional order: The State of the Debate in Tanzania
(University of Dar es Salaam, 1996-01-11) Shivji, Issa G.
In this paper I highlight some of the important considerations in the debate on making a new constitution for Tanzania. First and foremost, by tracing the history of constitutional development in the country I attempt to derive certain lessons which can then feed into assisting us in determining the path of constitution-making. As a matter fact, it is only such a historical approach that can help us to build a consensus on the need for a new constitution. The issue is not technical and legal. The issue is historical and political. Consensus building is both an intellectual as well as a political task. So while making out a case for constitution-making that will embody national consensus, I hope, I am also assisting in constructing a consensus on the need for a new constitution.
The Dawn of Pan-Africanism
(2000) Shivji, Issa G.
This is a short piece calling Upon African intellectuals to make PaAfricanism a category of intellectual thought and rise to the vision of continental unity rather than sink in parochial nationalisms.
Whose Law rules under the Rule of Law and who are the Governors of Good Governance? ** The Tasks of a Journalist Intellectual
(2000) Shivji, Issa G.
I could expound on rule of law, define its virtues, caution against its misinterpretations, recommend for more seminars, workshops and symposia on how to teach rule of law to our ignorant peasantry. I could talk about the elements of good governance, the need for it in Africa, and how corruption is eroding governance. I could even make a fool of myself by asking why Tanzania needs good governance when Norway or Britain or France or Sweden does not.
Three Generations of Constitutions in Africa: An Overview and Assessment in Social and Economic Context
(2000) Shivji, Issa G.
Discusses constitutions and constitution-making of three generations- independence constitutions modeled on those of metropolitan powers; nationalist constitutions during the developmentalist period and the current multiparty constitutions in the neoliberal era.
The Mwalimu in Nyerere
(2000) Shivji, Issa G.
[Author's note (16/10/99): Nyerere is no more with us. The fulsome tribute paid to him almost universally shows the giant of a man that Nyerere was. On his 75 birthday two years ago, I wrote a piece which was published in the local newspaper Observer. Rereading it today, I feel the best tribute one can pay is to be able to say behind his back what we said in front of him. I cannot do any better than reproduce it. I would not even want to change the tense because although Nyerere is no more, the Mwalimu in him - his ideas and the struggle for equality, humanity, justice and dignity that he stood for - lives on. Mwalimu did not die. His struggle and ideas in defence of the Oppressed live on.]
Nationalism and Pan-Africanism: Decisive Moments in Nyerere’s Intellectual and Political Thought Preliminary Notes
(2000) Shivji, Issa G.
Julius Kambarage Nyerere belonged to the first generation of African nationalists. He was among the most articulate, intense and militant. Leading a country like Tanganyika, which was essentially a semi-commoditized peasant society and ruled as a trust territory, provided space to an individual leader which was not available, for example, to a much more differentiated society like that of Kenya under the white settler rule or Uganda with a history of fairly developed kingdoms. While individuals may make history, they do not choose the circumstances in which they do so. The circumstances are given by history (Marx 1869, 1973: 146, Carr: 1961: passim, Plekhanov 1969.). The circumstances of the then Tanganyika where social forces were not developed produced a prominent individual like Nyerere who no doubt appeared to tower above society and so did the state, which he headed after independence. An understanding of the trajectory of Nyerere’s intellectual and political thought is not only rewarding in its own right but also because it tells a lot on and about the context, circumstances and the lives and struggles of his fellow Tanganyikans.
Is Might a Right in Human Rights
(University of Dar es Salaam, 2000) Shivji, Issa G.
Human rights is a contentious discourse. Like any other articulated set of ideas, or ideology, human rights ideology is historically and politically determined. It embodies unequal relations of power and social and economic inequities present in our national societies and international orders. (See Shivji 1989, 1999). Those who dominate and rule also produce ruling and dominating ideas. But wherever there is oppression there is bound to be resistance. Just as domination is articulated through ruling ideologies and mainstream discourses, so does resistance find expression, however truncated, in contending ideologies and discourses. Human rights discourse therefore is not an absolute truth, true for all times and all people in all places but a series of historically and politically constructed contentions (or truths, half-truths and untruths, if you like) articulating within it the wishes, desires and interests of the powerful as well as the voices and cries of the powerless. The powerful cloth their might in 'right and legality', while the powerless struggle to justify their resistance in 'righteousness and justice'. This is not a watertight binary as at times 'resistance' appropriates 'legality', while 'might' feigns 'justice and morality'. In this brief presentation, I try to highlight the contentious discourse around one of the rights central to our modern societies, the right of peoples to self-determination.
Law and Access to Justice: The Rhetoric and the Reality
(East African Journal of Peace and Human Rights, 2001) Shivji, Issa G.
This article discusses the marked contrast between theory and reality of law and access to justice in Tanzania. Based on a legal matter the author prosecuted some twenty years ago, it first reflects on the problems of the needy in accessing what is essentially an alien, class law and justice. The article considers issues pertaining to legal education, beginning with the author's narrative of his experiences with teaching and learning law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Dar es Salaam. It finally concludes that there is a yawning schism between need and demand in legal education. Whereas there is a clear need for training a lawyer-as-a-social-critique and lawyer-as-a-professional-craftsperson, grounded in the vision of a rational and humane social order, the demand is for a lawyer-mechanic to mend the ruthless machines of the globalizing corporate world. However, the vocation of universities should be to train a lawyer who combines in him/her a social critique, and a professional craftsperson, and thus is guided by his/her social reponsibilities.

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