Introducing Apartheid Studies (AS): A new forensicinductive philosophy for abolishing harm (original) (raw)
Related papers
2018
This Concept Paper proposes the establishment of a new, systematic and global forensic field of studies from the global south known as Apartheid Studies, and outlines the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of such a field.
Glimpse, 2019
This Keynote Address is about what Donald Trump would categorise as the shitholes of the world. Underlying our modern times is a large, unsolved problem about what is really going on in the world. I use the novel theoretical lens of Apartheid Studies to appreciate how we have neglected to read, recognise and call out the persistent “circuits of apartheid” that are at the heart of global capitalist modernity. Our contemporary age, built on interoperable digital networks, tends to reinforce global forms of apartheid rather than resist them. Apartheid Studies is a new field of studies that makes it possible to expose these circuits. Whereas human beings are human because we all possess a kind of strongly encrypted password which we reserve to give or not to give – so that we feel relatively protected and free to be what we want – this password protection has been eroded by institutions and powerful elites. Modernity itself, by its very nature, emerges when we start to share our passwords with strangers. Passing on the control of the passwords of our being to strangers causes global apartheid. Global capitalist modernity, expressed in invasive technology, generally undermines human beings’ sense of self, of immunity, inviolability, indivisibility, and replaces it with interoperable networks, social media and an internet of things predicated on sharing our privacy with strangers. I propose new emphases on restorative “forensics” and literacies that, I argue, are appropriate in the task of generating a scholarship of the future that is ethical, is opposed to systemic injustice, exposes global exploitation, racism, deception, lying and corruption, and promotes just worlds.
Prosecuting the Crime Against Humanity of Apartheid: Never, Again
African Yearbook of International Humanitarian Law, 2018
Despite being declared a crime against humanity by the United Nations General Assembly in 1966, and being the subject of a convention which more than half the states in the world have signed up to that demands its punishment, there has never been a single prosecution of the crimes against humanity of apartheid committed in South Africa. This paper interrogates the commitment of the ‘invisible college of international (criminal) lawyers’ to never prosecute the crime against humanity of apartheid, both at Rome in 1998 and more recently in the efforts by the Crimes Against Humanity Initiative and International Law Commission to produce a specialized convention on the subject. It argues that, at best, the ‘symbolic’ inclusion of apartheid in the latter signifies this commitment to never prosecute apartheid once again (this time at the domestic level). At worst, it discloses the racial politics of international criminal law that render the prosecution of the crimes committed by the West or in its name not only untimely, but unthinkable.
The Crime against Humanity of Apartheid in a Post-Apartheid World (Oslo Law Review)
The crime against humanity of apartheid has been widely neglected: jurisprudence is non-existent and the academic discourse modest. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is the first international criminal tribunal to include the crime against humanity of apartheid in its statute, notwithstanding the controversy of this crime. According to critics the crime is a South African phenomenon that has not reached the status of customary law. The provision on apartheid in the Rome Statute of the ICC builds on the Apartheid Convention, which is highly contentious and not signed by any Western State. All the more, it is surprising that apartheid was included in the Statute. Despite the fact that the crime of apartheid has never been prosecuted, this article argues that its inclusion into the Rome Statute raises some unique and interesting questions. It shows the international community’s belief in the deterrent effect of this crime, as well as its continued importance. This article will scrutinise the elements of the crime and reveal definitional challenges. It will, in particular, discuss potential contemporary situations of apartheid. The ICC Prosecutor will have to release apartheid from its historical connection in order to bring to justice perpetrators of systematic racial oppression.
1999
Law. From 1996-1998 I was a consultant in international law to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These introductory comments, and the contents of the submission itself, do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Commission. I am grateful to all who contributed to the drafting of the submission, in particular Margaret DeGuzman and the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Law Clinic at Yale Law School, and Scott Christensen of Hughs, Hubbard & Reed and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights. 1. See, e.g., Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limits to War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity, 660 U.N.T.S. 195, reprinted in 8 I.L.M. 68 (1969) [hereinafter Statutory Limitations Convention], discussed infra at note 65. 2. "Persecution based on race" is a part of every definition of crimes against humanity that has been considered since the first definition articulated in the Nuremberg Charter. See infra notes 31-49 and accompanying text. 3. See infra note 101 and accompanying text. [Vol. 20:267 10. See infra note 116; 2 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, 510-23 (1998) (reporting on the TRC's special investigation into biological and chemical warfare). To provide genocide, one must show that certain acts were committed with "the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, as such." See infra note 106.
South African criminology in denial
This paper responds to key aspects of Bill Dixon’s article ‘Understanding ‘Pointy Face’, what is criminology for? It suggests that criminology should unambiguously be ‘for’ social justice in South Africa’s transhistorically unequal context. SA prison statistics are used as a conceptual shortcut to briefly highlight racialised constructions of crime, the criminal and the criminologist. A trans-disciplinary conceptual approach, as a more appropriate way to understand violent crime in South Africa, is argued for from a black standpoint. A methodological framework, which draws on the notion of cultural-structural-direct violence and intersectional theory, is presented. These extend Bill Dixon’s call for criminology to include history, structure, human psyche and biography and resonate with Biko Agozino’s call for a ‘counter-colonial criminology. The paper ends by returning the Eurocentric gaze of SA criminologists, calling them out on their collective denial about trans-historical violence which implicates ‘Pale Face’ in the violence of ‘Pointy Face’.