THE 1998 book called Pursuing Grounded Theory in Law: South-North Experiences in Developing Women’s Law went some way to recognise the continuing vibrancy of living African law in Zimbabwe, but the authors could not free themselves of the derogatory or pejorative language which has become conventional among non-governmental organisations (NGOs), academics and lawyers when describing indigenous African knowledge and practice.
Then the authors gave a definition of living law:
“According to E Ehrlich ‘the living law’ is ‘the law which dominates life itself even though it has not been posited in legal propositions’.
“He postulates that ‘the concrete usages, the relations of domination, the legal relations, the contracts, the articles of association, the disposition by last will and testament, (all) yield the rules according to which they (the people) regulate their conduct’.
“A main concern of Ehrlich’s sociological jurisprudence was to bridge the gap between evolved positive law and ‘living law’.
“Thus to prevent jurisprudential analysis of law from slipping out of this social context, it is suggested that legal science should pay attention to the legal traffic which takes place through harmonious human interaction in various (day-to-day) walks of life.”
The purpose of the continuing illegal white sanctions against Zimbabwe is to convey the white message: that Africans should not and cannot settle the question of white land theft according to living African law and its indigenous protocols and rituals of place and space.
Instead, Africans must continue to appeal (for mercy) to the very same international law, that is the same white law responsible for their initial dispossession.
African living law means original indigenous power.
In the exchange recorded by The Chronicle on June 25 2014, the CSC and the Committee of Parliament expected female ‘professionals’ to ignore or downgrade the realities of ‘day-to-day walks of life’ to prove that they were ‘modern’, ‘professional’ and aware of their ‘rights’ under the new Eurocentric Constitution.
African conception of human life and dignity before the imposition of Eurocentric Linear Perspective Vision:
An examination of African thought and practice in Southern Africa and elsewhere shows that Africans viewed human nurturing and defence of human life and dignity as a system based on three pillars or foundations, very much like mapfiwa (triad) for the stove for cooking.
Unhu meant a system of collective values intended to guarantee three things for all members of the community:
The first was the protection of access to means of insuring survival
This obligation was promoted through protocols of African egalitarianism, a philosophy very much like the socialist motto of “From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.”
In East and Southern Africa, this philosophy was actualised in two ways: Through the institution of what the Shona call nhimbe and the Ndebele call ilima.
The pooling of community labour on the land ensured that all essential values remained use values and that even widows, widowers and orphans were able to cultivate fairly large fields and harvest more than enough to feed themselves individually.
The other way in which protocols of egalitarianism were put into practice was through the guarantee of food to strangers and travellers.
When travelling, the sojourners were allowed to stop in the middle of fields of maize, cucumbers, fruits and other crops and pick and eat there and then what they needed, without having to find out whose fields they were walking through.
The owners of the fields allowed this on the understanding that someday they too would become travellers or strangers enjoying the very same protections and privileges.
Zunde ramambo represents the same concept now extended by the chief or the king to the entire realm.
In Roots of Black History, Robin Walker cites the following example from Mwene Mutapa, Zimbabwe, based on the writings of Portuguese archivist Antonio Bocarro:
“(The Mutapa) shows great charity to the blind and the maimed, for these are called king’s poor, and have land and revenues for their subsistence, and when they wish to pass through the kingdom, wherever they come food and drinks are given to them at the public cost as long as they remain there, and when they leave that place to go to another they are provided with what is necessary for their journey, and a guide, and someone to carry their wallet to the next village.
“In every place where they come there is the same obligation, under penalty that those who fail therein shall be punished by the king.”
We should note that the Portuguese archivist was a stranger to protocols of African egalitarianism.
As a result, he took it to be the same as the concept and practice of ‘charity’ in Catholic Europe.
African egalitarianism is the opposite of charity.
That it is why there is provision of land and revenues for the disabled in Mwene Mutapa’s empire.