The University of Cape Town is delighted to host the 2003 IALL Meeting. We have put together a program, which we hope, you will find moving, interesting and thought-provoking, and we hope that you will enjoy your visit to our beautiful city. Librarians from more than 20 countries on five continents have gathered here for a few days, giving us a wonderfully enriching opportunity to learn from each other and to share our wide diversity of experience. We are especially happy to welcome so many African delegates, and pleased that the African venue has enabled the participation of law librarians who struggle to fund trips further abroad.

I spent some time contemplating what you might find particularly interesting about the history of the Waterfront, until I learnt that many of you are staying at hotels on Portswood Road, and that the conference itself is at the Breakwater campus of the University of Cape Town (UCT.) This persuaded me to use the history of the crenellated building that dominates Portswood Ridge, and forms the heart of the UCT Business School campus, to talk about a number of important themes in the history of the country you have chosen for your latest conference. Just over one hundred years ago, that building came into existence as The Industrial Breakwater Prison. It was an addition to the original convict station that lay further down Portswood Road towards the sea. There are perhaps four particularly important ways in which this building, and its surrounding area, were connected to significant moments or processes in South Africa's past: the development of Cape Town's harbor, colonial conquest and resistance, the development of a diamond industry and, yes, the origins of apartheid. How so?

It is more than ten years since our new constitutional era dawned, and nearly ten years since the Constitutional Court was established. It is a fitting time then to reflect upon those first ten years: what have been the achievements, and what challenges remain for the future.

In January 1672, nearly twenty years after the Dutch East India Company had established an outpost at Africa's Cape of Good Hope, a case was adjudicated by the rudimentary local judicial body, the Council of Justice, the significance of which was evident even then. The facts were simple. Members of the indigenous population were accused of having robbed and assaulted European servants of the Company. The legal question before the Council, however, was an intricate one. Did it have jurisdiction over the accused and could it apply to them the same law as would have been applied if the roles of perpetrator and victim had been reversed? The prosecutor successfully urged an affirmative answer. Citingthe Roman Emperor Justinian's Corpus Iuris Civilis, he argued that: “Since the law of nature is implanted in all reasonable creatures, the Hottentots cannot be excluded therefrom. They are consequently subject to the law of nature and therefore also the law of nations …”

Twenty years ago in 1983, three seemingly disparate events were to have a dramatic impact on law, politics and social transformation in our country. Ten years later, in April 1993, a political event dramatically signaled a change in the legal landscape forever. Or so we hope.

Socio-economic rights are those human rights that aim to secure for all members of a particular society a basic quality of life in terms of food, water, shelter, education, health care and housing. They differ from traditional civil and political rights such as the right to equality, personal liberty, property, free speech and association. These “traditional human rights” are now found in most democratic constitutions and are, as a rule, enshrined in a Bill of Rights; which is that part of the Constitution that is normally enforced through mechanisms such as judicial review. The victims of the violation of such rights have a legal remedy. Individual freedom is a primary value underpinning civil and political rights.

This paper briefly discusses the transformation of the customary law of marriage in South Africa by the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of 1998 Act (hereafter referred to as the Act), and the likely challenges of implementing the new law. The latter will be demonstrated by reference to section 7 of the Act, which regulates the matrimonial property.

Both theoretically and constitutionally, South Africa is a secular state with many religious and non-religious groupings co-existing with each other. The reality is that there is widespread observance of both religious and customary law — despite a lack of or limited recognition thereof under the apartheid government. The non-recognition of other forms of law in South Africa has had negative consequences and the remedial efforts of the present government is visible both in the area of customary law and also Muslim Personal Law, hereinafter referred to as MPL. This paper will confine itself to discussing the law reform efforts in respect of the recognition of Muslim marriages.

South Africa suffered a long history of colonization, racial domination and land dispossession that resulted in the bulk of the agricultural land being owned by a white minority. Black people resisted being dispossessed but were defeated by the superior arms of the newcomers. As Lewin has written, “whatever minor causes there may have been for the many Bantu-European wars, the desire for land was the fundamental cause.” Despite the claims that South Africa was largely uninhabited at the time of the arrival of Europeans, documentary evidence shows that in fact the land was inhabited. Thus the journal of the first European to settle at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck records incidents of confrontation with the indigenous Khoi-khoi (or Hottentots) in 1655.

It is an honor to have been invited to deliver this paper on my experiences as a member of the group drafting South Africa's first Bill of Rights in the course of the constitutional negotiations in 1993 to such an august international audience. I am also very pleased to be sharing the podium with Christina Murray, since we were student contemporaries (although at neighboring universities) and have been close colleagues in the Department of Public Law at the University of Cape Town since early 1988. Despite our close working relationship over these years, however, I think that this is the first occasion upon which we have talked jointly about our experiences in assisting the drafting of the Constitution, which makes it a special occasion for us, too. Mine will be a very personal recollection and assessment of a period in the constitutional history of South Africa which I never believed possible, let alone that I should have played a small part in it.

On May 7, 1996 about 50 politicians were gathered together in the Parliament buildings in Cape Town negotiating the final details of South Africa's long-awaited democratic Constitution. There, too, were huddles of advisers, the long-suffering members of the administrative staff of the Constitutional Assembly, and members of the press who, generally absent from the process, had come to record the last moments. Behind the scenes the lay-out team was ready to put the last touches to the document and printers stood ready. Late that night, Cyril Ramaphosa, the Chairperson of the Constitutional Assembly, pleaded with the group in his characteristically ironic fashion: “I know it's late but just 20 minutes more, just 20 minutes – for our Constitution which is for the next 20 years, no, 50 years, 100 years, 200 years. …”

The Constitutional Court is the highest court in South Africa in all matters concerning the interpretation and enforcement of the provisions of the Constitution. The Court was established in 1994 in compliance with the provisions of the Interim Constitution which came into force when the first democratic elections were held, and started hearing its first cases in February 1995. The mission of the Library is primarily to support the work of the Constitutional Court.

Nigeria is a federal state with an estimated population of 120 million, making it the most populous country in Africa. For one hundred years, from 1861 when Lagos was colonized to 1960 when it gained its independence, Nigeria was under British colonial rule. There are about 400 nationalities in the country. In 1914, the Colony of Lagos and the Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria that had been constituted over time during the colonial enterprise were amalgamated into one single colonial state.

The Center, now known as the Mcnight Legal Resource Centre, was established at the University of Malawi and designed to provide information support for the efficient and effective performance of the law faculty and staff, students and researchers and institutions and organizations associated with the University, including related government departments and research centers.

The Southern and Eastern African Regional Centre for Women's Law – SEARCWL - (in daily language just called the Women's Law Centre) is an institute under the Faculty of Law, University of Zimbabwe (UZ). It all started way back in the late 1980'ies when the Norwegian Agency for Development (NORAD) sponsored diploma courses in women's law for participants from Africa, at the University of Oslo. The first three courses were held in Oslo, but then the venue was moved to the University of Zimbabwe, and through the 1990'ies more than a hundred scholars have passed through the diploma courses. From February 2003, a masters degree program has been running with 28 students from 10 different countries (Cameroon, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe). From mid-June until the end of August we had an additional 19 students, so-called “upgraders” – i.e. ex-diploma students upgrading their diploma to a Masters degree.