REVIEWS
| Date | 01 March 1989 |
| Published date | 01 March 1989 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.1989.tb02825.x |
REVIEWS
ESSAYS
ON
LAW
AND
SOCIAL PRACTICE
IN
SOUTH
AFRICA.
Edited
by
HUGH
CORDER.
[Cape
Town:
Juta.
1988.
xii
and
368
pp.
R54.00,
paperback].
THIS
book is an introduction to South African law and legal practice seen
through the eyes
of
various “progressive” South African academics.
According to the Preface, it is supposed
to
be
a
book about jurisprudence,
though,
as
it turns out-much to the book’s merit-the label applies rather
broadly here. Writing, editing and publishing the book clearly involved
great struggle: one of
the
contributors commissioned was detained without
trial under
the
“state
of
emergency” declared
in
June
1986;
other authors,
fearing
as
much, declined from participating in or eventually pulled out of
the project; and in some areas, such
as
South African private law,
it
proved simply impossible to find even one academic sympathetic towards
the “enlightened” politics
of
the book. Furthermore,
as
the editor, in
a
distinctly understated fashion, remarks, “the declaration of the states of
emergency and their inevitable effects on
the
work
of
several authors were
not helpful” (p.vii).
The above problems may explain some
of
the shortcomings
of
this
collection. Comprised
of
an Introduction and two parts,
the
essential
difficulty with this book rests in Part A, which deals with
“The
Application
of Particular Theories to South African Conditions.” In their preliminary
chapter-which provides an excellent introduction to
the
history of modern
South African law and legal doctrine-Hugh Corder and Dennis Davis
explain that the purpose
of
Part A
of
the book is
to
examine critically the
“Cinderella status” (p.5) accorded to jurisprudence
in
most South African
law faculties, in the hope of investing this subject with greater significance
within the law syllabus. “An important task of legal scholarship,” they
state, “must surely be
to
provide conceptual frameworks not only
to
understand
the
law but to assist in its development
as
a
mechanism to
promote a democratic society” (p.23). Few of the chapters
in
Part A are
adequate to this task. Laurens du Plessis’ chapter on Jean Calvin is
essentially
little
more than
a
vignette
of
the man and his work. In South
Africa, Calvinism is “looked upon
as
the ideological or spiritual source
of
and justification for apartheid” (p. 33). One would expect, therefore, in
a
book such
as
this, that the manner in which Calvinian theology has been
used
to
justify pro-apartheid ideology would come under especial scrutiny.
Yet this is not du Plessis’ intention. “Calvin himself was
[
.
.
.
]
an
enlightened, innovative and even progressive thinker in
his
own right. And
if
the
name
of
what has come to be known
as
‘Calvinism’ obscures this
fact, then scholarly integrity requires
a
renaming
of
the actual tradition
ensuing from (authentic or original) Calvinian thought” (pp.33-4). In
other words, then, the purpose
of
du Plessis’ essay is not to consider the
political realities
of
the South African regime, but simply to vindicate the
name and work
of
Jean Calvin. If only implicitly, such an approach
smacks
of
intellectual arrogance.
Similar, albeit less serious problems attach to most
of
the other essays
in
the first part
of
this book. Derek van der Merwe’s chapter
in
praise
of
Kelsen is good in its biographical and bibliographical details, but can
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