Uganda’s courts ‘too westernized to handle cultural, customary issues’ – high court judge
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Prominent Ugandan high court judge Ssekaana Musa has told litigants in dispute over traditional leadership that they should ‘always’ refer such quarrels ‘to the King or traditional or cultural leaders’. Judge Musa was considering two disputes about traditional leadership positions. He said that courts should discourage ‘petty issues’ like who was the rightful heir, family head or chief prince, from being ‘dragged to court’. These matters would be better dealt with by the established mechanism of a particular community, he said.
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Last minute 'settlement' in Lesotho's shock judicial disputes
 As fresh elections in Lesotho seem increasingly likely because of splits in the ruling party, a last minute settlement means the judicial disputes that have shocked the legal world over the last month are, at least for now, off the table. The settlement came shortly after new details emerged of barbed correspondence between the President of the Court of Appeal, the Acting Chief Justice and the Prime Minister, Thomas Thabane. The correspondence formed part of the founding affidavit in papers filed by the law society of Lesotho in litigation aimed at preventing the appeal court president's suspension. It is widely believed that Thabane wants to get rid of the appeal court president, formerly a judicial favourite of his, because the Prime Minister no longer perceives the judge to be on his side in the ruling party's continuing leadership struggle.
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African Commercial Case Law Index
 A new tool has just been launched by AfricanLII that will greatly benefit judges, litigants and their legal representatives involved in commercial matters. The African Commercial Case Law Index includes cases from South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania and Ghana. It’s based on the many thousands of documents and decided cases in the AfricanLII collection, from which 400 cases have been selected to show judgement trends and the application of local laws in these jurisdictions. All in one place you can now research how commercial matters in your own jurisdiction and others, have been decided.
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Keep the running dogs out of court
Dzingirai v Hwende and 114 others
High court of Zimbabwe, Harare
Judge Happias Zhou
This case, brought by an opposition critic of the present government in Zimbabwe, was never going to get off the ground. Judge Happias Zhou said the issues raised were brought to satisfy the ego of the applicant. He also had some scathing words for counsel in the matter. The language used in the founding affidavit was ‘reckless, intemperate and unnecessary scurrilous’ and referred to the presidential swearing-in as the ‘so called inauguration’. This rather got up the judge’s nose. Not only did he make a punitive costs order against the applicant and his legal practitioners, he also ordered the lawyers to go back to school:
Epithets like ‘illegal junta’, ‘running dogs of the junta’, ‘illegitimate regime’, ‘the usurper’, or ‘de facto President’, in describing an elected President are unacceptable in court documents. … Lawyers must take responsibility for the language used in pleadings and other court documents which they draft on behalf of their client. In this case I would recommend to the Council of the Law Society of Zimbabwe that the lawyer who drafted the founding affidavit … presents himself or herself for training on legal ethics and … drafting courses offered by the Council for Legal Education. The deficiencies in the affidavit … (indicate) a genuine need for such training.’
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African Court Law Report, Vol. 1
 For the first time in its 13-year history, the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights has published a volume that brings together its judgments, advisory opinions and other decisions. The new collection deals with the court’s first 10 years, from 2006 to 2016, and is published by the Pretoria University Law Press. It includes a user guide, an alphabetical table of cases and a subject index, among others. The court’s decisions tend to be an under-used judicial resource, partly because of the difficulty of accessing all the decisions in one place, and in a format that makes it convenient to find particular subjects. The new volume solves many of these problems and we recommend that our readers download the report and try this resource for themselves. The court president, Justice Sylvain Ore, commented: ‘Considering that the court has not had any law report since its establishment, the publication of this volume is a significant milestone. It will be an immeasurable aid to researchers and practitioners alike.’
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About Carmel Rickard
Carmel Rickard has written about the law, human rights, justice, judgements and judicial matters for many years. A former legal editor of The Sunday Times, South Africa's biggest newspaper, she is now a columnist on legal issues.
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Judicial Leaders - 22 July - 26 July 2019
Environmental Law Course - 26 August - 30 August 2019
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JIFA is a partnership between the DGRU at UCT, the SACJF and ICJ-AFRICA, which provides university-certified short courses to judges in Africa.
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