Department of Public Law

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Accumulation in an African Periphery
(Mkuki na Nyota Publishers, 2009) Shivji, Issa G.
The "Washington consensus" which ushered in neo-liberal policies in Africa is over. It was buried at the G20 meeting in London in early April, 2009. The world capitalist system is in shambles. The champions of capitalism in the global North are rewriting the rules of the game to save it. The crisis creates an opening for the global South, in particular Africa, to refuse to play the capitalist-imperialist game, whatever the rules. It is time to rethink and revisit the development direction and strategies on the continent. This is the central message of this intensely argued book. Issa Shivji demonstrates the need to go back to the basics of radical political economy and ask fundamental questions: who produces the society's surplus product, who appropriates and accumulates it and how is this done. What is the character of accumulation and what is the social agency of change? The book provides an alternative theoretical framework to help African researchers and intellectuals to understand their societies better and contribute towards changing them in the interest of the working people.
Agrarian Problems and Development
(University of Dar es Salaam, 1980-08-12) Shivji, Issa G.
Alternatives and Adjuncts to Domestic Prosecutions
(TMC Asser Press, 2015) Materu, Sosteness F.
When a country decides to address past human rights violations committed on its territory, it has two options to pursue, namely retributive justice (prosecution) and restorative justice (non-prosecution) mechanisms. However, within the context of so-called “peace versus justice debate”, it is settled that whenever both mechanisms are pursued in a given transition, it is important to ensure that both peace and justice are achieved. This chapter focuses mainly on the Kenyan truth commission as one of the restorative justice mechanisms pursued as an integral part of the agreed domestic road map for accountability for the atrocities linked to the post-election violence. The chapter concentrates only on the aspects of the truth commission that have a bearing on criminal accountability for the crimes against humanity allegedly committed during the violence. It reveals that in view of the structure of the commission’s legal framework, there are both strong and grey areas with the potential of affecting criminal accountability positively or negatively.
Background to the Post-Election Violence
(Springer, 2015) Materu, Sosteness F.
Literature indicates that the violence accompanying the 2007 general elections in Kenya was a spill-over effect of the country’s previous history, hence the need to scrutinize the historical antecedents to these elections. This chapter identifies and analyzes five factors, namely negative ethnicity, dictatorship, political alliances, criminal gangs and impunity, which, prior to the 2007 elections, had characterized the Kenyan politics. The chapter reveals that in view of the five factors, feelings had developed in Kenya, already before the 2007 elections, that certain ethnic communities had been deliberately marginalized since independence, while others had been highly privileged or favoured in different ways. This gave rise, inter alia, to a number of historical fears and grievances, mostly in relation to land. It is shown that this state of affairs became a recipe for election violence accompanying all the multiparty elections prior to 2007, and since the grievances were not addressed, and in view of the previous trend of election violence, it indeed became certain that even the 2007 general elections would not be free from violence.
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.
Confronting grand corruption in the public and private sector: A spirited new initiative from Tanzania
(Namibia Law Journal, 2009) Masabo, Juliana
Criminal Accountability at Domestic Level
(TMC Asser Press, 2015) Materu, Sosteness F.
A state wishing to punish the core crimes under international law in its domestic courts can choose to follow two approaches. The first is to prosecute those crimes by relying on its ordinary domestic criminal law. The second approach is to prosecute them by relying on the structure of international criminal law as it is or as modified. The effectiveness of the first approach depends largely on how broadly or narrowly the domestic criminal law is structured, whereas that of the second approach depends, inter alia, on the practice followed in that state as regards domestication of international law norms so as to make them enforceable in the domestic courts. This chapter examines the two approaches in relation to the crimes against humanity allegedly committed in Kenya during the post-election violence, and evaluates whether Kenya has or could have utilized any of the approaches to effectively prosecute and punish the main perpetrators of these crimes. This discussion will provide a model for other jurisdictions, especially in the developing countries, that wish to address impunity for the core crimes in their domestic courts.
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.
Democracy and Democratization in Africa: Interrogating Paradigms and Practices
(2011-11-09) Shivji, Issa G.
Democracy is a model. Democratisation is a process. Democracy is a transplant. Democratisation is organic. By democracy I mean the concept of bourgeois liberal democracy imposed by the West on the Rest. By democratisation I mean the struggles of the Rest against the West and its local ‘implants’ to expand the sphere of human freedom and dignity. Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1492 and blazed the trail for Western invasion of Africa and Asia. Christopher Columbus landed in Hispaniola (modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) also in 1492 planting the seeds of first genocide of the original inhabitants of the Americas, the so-called Red Indians, and the most gruesome trade: The triangular, Atlantic slave trade. Thus began the next five centuries of the development of the world capitalist system and Western civilisation, with accumulation in the centre and dispossession in the periphery. The stories we tell our children and the history we teach them and the values we preach at the altar are spurned by the hegemonic West. This is called civilisation, progress, universal human rights, development, modernisation and now globalisation. The process of resistance against dispossession is called barbarism, cannibalism, nativism, witchcraft, juju, tribalism and terrorism. Thus goes on the story of the West and the Rest to this day as we meet here to discuss the liberal model of democracy, good governance, human rights, transparency, accountability, humanitarianism etc.
The democracy Debate in Africa: Tanzania
(Taylor & Francis, 1991-03) Shivji, Issa G.
Demolish to Develop (2003)
(2003) Shivji, Issa G.
Edward Moringe Sokoine: Fikra Zake Juu ya Maendeleo
(2004-04-07) 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.
'Fast - Tracking' East African Integration: Pacta Sunt Servanda Betrayed?
(Journal of Africa and International Law, 2010) Kamanga, Khoti Chilomba
One notable characteristic of regional economic communities appears to be gradualism and pragmatism in terms of membership expansion but also in rolling out the integration process. This is markedly so, in respect to the European Union but also several African RECs. The East African Community (EAC) has also embraced this tested good practice. The study finds the 2004 'fast tracking' of the EAC integration in conflict with both the provisions of the EAC Treaty, 1999, as well as global best practices'.
The Federation of Great Lakes Region
(2004-12-04) Shivji, Issa G.
The East African Federation is again on the horizon. The timetable is out. The Federation that was much talked about over forty years ago by the nationalist leaders may just come to fruition but under very different conditions. All the peoples of East Africa must debate these new conditions. This time around we should not leave it simply to the states and politicians to unite us. Only if we unite as a people can we ensure sustained unity. And as a people we have to widen our horizons to take into account new conditions and possibilities. I would like to underscore two new conditions. First, the original four countries Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika and Zanzibar which were supposed to be part of the Federation in the early 1960s have contracted to three as Tanganyika and Zanzibar are now Tanzania. As we know, the Union question itself has been a subject of much discussion among us. Do we need to resolve this issue as we enter the Federation? Secondly, the number of potential members of the Federation has expanded to five, Rwanda and Burundi have not only shown interest but want very much to be part of the process right from the beginning. This is a welcome sign. But we have to go beyond. We have to think in terms of a Federation of Great Lakes Region (FGLR). The Federation of Great Lakes Region would include the Democratic Republic of Congo. There are many very good reasons why we should think in terms of a greater federation. The DRC shares long borders with at least four East African countries, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. It is the richest country in Africa, holding the world's biggest deposits of copper, cobalt, and cadmium. DRC has seen no peace as its riches are coveted by imperial powers. Even neighbouring countries like Uganda and Rwanda did not spare DRC. The wars in DRC invariably spill over to the neighbouring East African countries, whether this is in the form of hundreds of thousands of refugees as in Tanzania or armed conflicts as in Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda. Both peace and prosperity in this part of the world depend strategically on peace, stability and prosperity in the DRC. It is not possible to secure peace without the DRC being part of a larger political entity.
Forced displacement and Conflict in the Great Lakes Region
(2011-09) Kamanga, Khoti Chilomba
The term ‘Great Lakes Region’, although used liberally, does not have a common, shared interpretation. In the context of the International Conference on the Great 1 Lakes Region (ICGLR) the term denotes eleven African states, seven of whom, namely Burundi, the DemocraticRepublic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, are perched on the shores of Africa’s largest lakes: Victoria, Tanganyika, Albert and Kivu. The remaining four ICGLR member states: Angola, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Republic of Congo – Brazzaville and Sudan, do not enjoy such proximity to the lakes. In this paper the term ‘Great Lakes Region’ has a restrictive interpretation and is conﬁ ned to the ‘core’ Great Lakes states of Burundi, the DRC, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda.
From Neoliberalism to PanAfricanism: Towards Reconstructing an Eastern African Discourse
(Critical Perspectives On Southern Africa, 2006) Shivji, Issa G.
The purpose of this short intervention is to review the state of interaction between our universities in East Africa so far as intellectual debate is concerned. If in the process I refer somewhat passionately to the debates of the 60s and 70s, it is not out of nostalgia but to draw inspiration. And we need this inspiration given the state of intellectual inertia and marketisation of academia that has set in with the invasion of neoliberal agenda in our universities. At the end I am also making a modest proposal as to how we may use the vantage point of this Workshop to start about reflecting on the mechanisms to kickstart the process of an Eastern African Discourse. But the academics that we are, I must provide the background and the context, albeit in somewhat disjointed sketches.
Haya ni Mahindi, sio Makana
(2002-10-17) Shivji, Issa G.
Intellectuals at the Hill
(Dar es Salaam University Press, 1993) Shivji, Issa G.
Intellectuals in Politics
(1993-01-30) Shivji, Issa G.

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