Chapter 5. The African State, Human Rights, and Religion

Human Rights ◽  
2002 ◽  
pp. 112-125
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
African State

China's engagement in Africa: scope, significance and consequences

2006 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-479 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis M. Tull
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
African State ◽  
Economic Consequences ◽  
International Strategy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Attractive Alternative ◽  
Political Consequences ◽  
The Past ◽  
Debt Cancellation ◽  
Recent Developments

China's vastly increased involvement in Africa over the past decade is one of the most significant recent developments in the region. It appears to contradict the idea of international marginalisation of Africa and brings significant economic and political consequences. China's Africa interest is part of a recently more active international strategy based on multipolarity and non-intervention. Increased aid, debt cancellation, and a boom in Chinese-African trade, with a strategic Chinese focus on oil, have proven mutually advantageous for China and African state elites. By offering aid without preconditions, China has presented an attractive alternative to conditional Western aid, and gained valuable diplomatic support to defend its international interests. However, a generally asymmetrical relationship differing little from previous African–Western patterns, alongside support of authoritarian governments at the expense of human rights, make the economic consequences of increased Chinese involvement in Africa mixed at best, while the political consequences are bound to prove deleterious.

scholarly journals The African State in a Wake of Neoliberal Globalization: A Cog in a Wheel or a Wheel in a Cog

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. p32
Author(s):  
Kizito Michael George
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
African State ◽  
Economic Globalization ◽  
The State ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Neoliberal Globalization ◽  
Central Concern ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Political Globalization

This paper situates the Sub-Saharan African state amidst the conflictual interface between the forces of political (Note 1) and economic globalization (Note 2) that have been ushered in the state milieu by neo-liberalism (Note 3). The paper argues that states are situated in an imperialistic globalization with capitalistic economic extirpation as central concern and social justice as a peripheral one. This categorically explicates the persistence of globalised economies and localized oppressive state apparatuses, ideologies and practices. The paper also contends that the forces of economic globalization have superimposed the cultural mantra in the Sub-Saharan Africa state milieu, rendering it virtually impossible to pursue a Rights Based Approach to Development (RBAD). The apparent assault by this globalization from above (economic globalization), continues almost unabated due to absence of an afro centric globalization from below to mitigate the homogenizing effects of economic globalization. Worse still, the inability of political globalization to check the daunting implications of economic globalization using a human rights antidote and the consequent slumber of the glocalisation dialectic in the African state locale explicate the problematic of Africa in the wake of erosion from above (global pillage) and devolution from below.

scholarly journals Mental health in post-genocide Rwanda

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 86-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Palmer ◽  
Nsanzumuhire Firmin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
African State ◽  
The Family ◽  
The World ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Hiv Aids

The children who experienced the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda are now in their mid to late 20s. It is almost impossible to comprehend the scale of the terror and destruction of Rwanda's societal infrastructure between 6 April and 16 July 1994. While the world remained inactive, Rwanda, a small impoverished central African state, experienced the murder of about 1 million of its citizens; it also saw the terrorising, humiliation and rape of countless thousands. Although women and children were directly targeted, some actively engaged in atrocities. About 300000 children were murdered, a significant number at the hands of other children. The level of terror differed across the country and escape was frequently by luck alone. A UNICEF (2004) study of 3000 children revealed that 80% had experienced death in the family, 70% had witnessed a killing or injury, 35% saw other children killing or injuring other children, 61% were threatened with being killed and 90% believed they would die (Human Rights Watch, 2003). Of the 250000 women raped, 30% were between 13 and 35 years of age, 67% developed HIV/AIDS and 20 000 births resulted (Donovan, 2002).

scholarly journals Framing Harm: Legal, Local and Anthropological Knowledge in the Context of Forced Migration

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon Morreira
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
African State ◽  
Forced Migration ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Legal Evidence ◽  
Objective Evidence ◽  
Similarities And Differences

The southern African state of Zimbabwe, which borders South Africa, has undergone a decade of severe political and economic instability. Migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa has been extensive, and continues even with the slight improvements that Zimbabwe has seen since 2009. In this paper I use migration from Zimbabwe to South Africa as a case study through which to explore knowledge creation within the field of forced migration and human rights, and within the field of anthropology. What are the similarities and differences between local, legal and anthropological knowledge of rights violations in the context of crisis? How do individual, subjective tales of suffering and violation become, or fail to become, supposedly objective ‘evidence’, and how might legal evidence differ from Zimbabwean moral knowledge of harm? In this paper I consider the difficulties of translating experiences of violation into legal and anthropological language and knowledge.    

Has it Reinvented Iron Law? South Africa’s Social Industrialisation, not Iron Industrialisation

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. K. Pooe
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Local Economic Development ◽  
African State ◽  
African National Congress ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Law And Development

Abstract This paper examines whether the current South African legal framework and subsequent policies post-1994 encourage and have emphatically fostered industrialisation in South Africa primarily and Southern Africa more generally. The primary contention of this paper is that the South African State, unlike fellow Southern African States, has a long history with industrialisation and should have laid the foundations for Southern Africa’s large scale industrialisation trajectory. However, the post-1994 government vision for South Africa has never had a Law and Development philosophy that prioritises and fosters industrialisation. Industrial Promotion in Africa, is understood as being concerned with drafting, strategically implementing and investing in industrially minded action plans. Through the prism of Local Economic Development policy and legislation in the Sedibeng region, this paper contends that industrialisation is still a farfetched endeavour despite industrially minded policies like the New Growth Path and the Industrial Policy Action Plans in South Africa. Moreover, South Africa’s industrialisation agenda is compromised by the Law and Development philosophy of the African National Congress led government. At the core of this philosophy is an overestimation of social justice activity like Human Rights promotion at the expense of Asian Developmental States’ non-human rights approach to economic development activity, like industrialisation in rural and township regions of South Africa.

scholarly journals Judicial Intervention in Facilitating Legal Recognition (and Regulation) of Muslim Family Law in Muslim-Minority Countries

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Waheeda Amien
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
South African ◽  
African State ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
The South ◽  
High Court ◽  
Long Line ◽  
Repeated Calls ◽  
Muslim Minority ◽  
Muslim Communities

In 2018, a groundbreaking judgment was delivered by a full bench of the Western Cape High Court in the matter of the Women’s Legal Centre Trust v. President of South Africa. This case followed a long line of judgments spanning some twenty-one years in which the South African judiciary afforded limited recognition to aspects of Muslim marriages. In this decision, the Western Cape High Court ordered the South African State to prepare, initiate, enact, and implement legislation that provides for the recognition and regulation of the consequences of Muslim marriages within twelve months of the date of judgment. In this Article, the author examines the following questions: Why has the South African State not yet recognized Muslim marriages despite repeated calls to do so by South African Muslim communities? Why has it taken a court to instruct the South African State to enact legislation to recognize Muslim marriages? What, if any, are the human rights implications of the judgment? And what difference, if any, will the judgment make in the lives of Muslims? The author argues that, despite the groundbreaking nature of the judgment, it does not go far enough to ensure sufficient protection for the human rights of Muslim women and that the manner in which the Western Cape High Court’s order is implemented could perpetuate the undermining of Muslim women’s human rights.

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