Provision for the redemption of alienated land exists in the customary law of many African tribes. Nor is it confined to Africa. Rattray, in discussing land redemption among the Ashanti, quotes the Levitical law of the Old Testament:

“The land shall not be sold for ever for the land is mine … if thy brother be waxen poor and has sold away some of his possessions and if any of his kin come to redeem then shall he redeem that which his brother sold.”

This paper has two purposes: (1) to consider certain aspects of the concept of “legal fiction”; (2) to indicate some of the means by which a local African court avoids the potential conflict between African customary law and European law.

The use of assessors in Courts of Admiralty in England is of long standing. The first reported case in which they are mentioned is probably The Ann of Mostein, but there is an even earlier reference to the practice of seeking advice from the Trinity House Masters dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century. The true status and function of assessors in England is not in doubt, but the same cannot be said of assessors in criminal trials in Africa, and the aim of this chapter is to clarify the position as far as possible. It is intended first to describe the law governing trial with assessors in the superior courts, then to discuss some of the problems that have arisen, and finally to attempt to define the true role of the assessor.

This draft is an attempt to meet a particular difficulty, which is likely to occur not infrequently in African countries where the present land law is dualistic in character and represents a partial amalgamation, or co-existence, of English and customary laws relating to land. Increasingly these two bodies of law will tend to draw together (as they have already done to a considerable extent in West Africa), and legislation will have to be prepared from time to time which is capable of applying both to interests held under English law and to interests under various sorts of customary law. This is pre-eminently the case where any proposal for registration, of title to land is involved, since the register (if it is not accompanied by a radical revision of the substantive land law) will have to show under as few heads as possible the different sorts of title that can exist in respect of land, under customary as well as under English law (where the latter forms the basis of the general law of the territory).

West Africa is a vast area consisting of many territories; of those five have come under the influence of the English law; four of these are within the Commonwealth, one is outside it. The four Commonwealth West African countries are: Gambia, Sierra Leone (which is to become independent early next year), the Republic of Ghana, and the Federation of Nigeria (which attained its independence on 1st October, 1960); the one non-Commonwealth country is the Republic of Liberia, the oldest independent state in West Africa.

The Kenya African Courts hear in a year about twice as many criminal charges as all the Magistrate's Courts of the Colony together, yet the nature of their functioning is very little known in legal circles. Their jurisdiction in criminal matters extends over some 27 sections of the Penal Code including theft and indecent assault, and over a large variety of offences under other laws, as well as over all African District Council By-laws. This paper aims to give a picture of certain illuminating peculiarities in their administration of this body of criminal law. It is based on the records of individual cases and on knowledge gained from hearing appeals from African Courts and on listening to cases being conducted. The North Nyanza Courts, where the material was gathered, are amongst the most advanced in Kenya, having a staff of elders and clerks of a higher average educational level than those of most other districts.

We now leave West Africa to consider the history of the jury system in other parts of the continent and turn first to Zanzibar. This is the oldest as well as the smallest of Britain's East African possessions, and though the jury system was completely abolished there in 19492 its history prior to that is worthy of some consideration. It will be seen that the introduction of the system was due to the close ties of Zanzibar in its early days with India, and the later history of the system was greatly influenced by the example of its near neighbour Kenya. It is not surprising therefore that a system having little intrinsic justification and, as will be seen, great disadvantages, was finally abolished.

As I read Dr. Allott's article “Towards a definition of Absolute Ownership” I felt increasing dismay because it postulates and makes appear immensely difficult, a problem which in actual working practice barely exists at all. For over sixty years Settlement Officers in the Sudan have been successfully determining ownership without the help of any definition, and in Kenya, during the last five years, the ownership of over a million plots has similarly been decided by committees. Even in West Africa, where there has been no process of systematic adjudication, ownership has been determined in over three thousand cases in Lagos, and ownership is not defined. Indeed I am not familiar with any statute anywhere which does define it.

A British Section of the Association was formed on 16th December, 1961, at an Inaugural Meeting in London, which was attended by a number of interested persons. It was envisaged that one of the major functions of the Section might be to collect and distribute information on work in progress in the United Kingdom in the African legal field. As it is at present very difficult to discover what work is being done by different institutions, the Chairman and Secretary of the British Section wrote to institutions which had, or might have, an interest in African legal studies, in order to ascertain what activities were in progress or had recently been completed.