Human rights through the eyes of my native land: South Africa in the world
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Welcome to the LSE Events Podcast by the London School of Economics and Political Science. Get ready to hear from some of the most influential international figures in the social sciences. Okay, I guess I'll just follow your cue because you all kind of fell quiet now. Good evening to everybody here in the hall and also some people joining us online. And welcome to our 25th annual LSE Human Rights Lecture held every year.

for the last 25 years on Human Rights Day, or close to Human Rights Day. Today we manage Human Rights Day, so that's very nice.

My name is Mavish Ahmed and I'm an assistant professor in human rights and politics and co-director of LSE Human Rights with Dr. Sara Salim, a transdisciplinary hub for critical research, teaching and scholarship on human rights based out of the Department of Sociology, which is also hosting tonight's event. Thank you to the efforts

So thanks to the efforts of our comms team, Maddie and Nina, and the public lectures team at LSE. So thank you very much for setting up and helping us with this event this evening. So this evening we have the pleasure of hosting Tembeka Nkaitobi.

a legal scholar and practicing lawyer, and also I should add a former student here at LSE. Many, many years ago, we found out that we were possibly here at the same time. Which tells you something about our age. I won't say when. So he's widely regarded as one of the most important thinkers around the limits and possibilities of law and constitutionalism in the permanent abolition of colonial, racial, and apartheid orders in South Africa.

especially as it manifests in unequal class and racialized ownership of land. He's the author of several books, including Land Matters, South Africa's Failed Land Reforms and The Road Ahead, and The Land is Ours, Black Lawyers and the Birth of Constitutionalism in South Africa. As a practicing lawyer, he spearheaded several landmark cases, including those looking into state capture allegations against former President Zuma,

And a year ago, he was appointed as part of South Africa's legal team at the International Court of Justice in the case arguing that Israel is indeed committing genocide under the Genocide Convention. As counsel and advocate, he presented evidence of Israel's genocidal intent. His scholarship and his years as a practicing lawyer is what prompted us at LSC Human Rights to invite him to deliver our 25th anniversary Human Rights lecture.

At LSE Human Rights, we have quite the reputation, perhaps paradoxically, for being very critical of a certain version of human rights. Or more precisely, critical of a dominant set of laws, institutions, and practices and norms that make up the global governance structures of human rights. We look critically at their ability, or inability rather,

in the post-war era of institutionalization to actually bring an end, a permanent end, to colonial, racial, class, gendered, sexual hierarchies around the world. And also, we look critically at the use of human rights and humanitarian discourses in the reproduction of coloniality or the reproduction of hierarchical categories of saviors and saved, backwards and civilized, north and south, and so on.

So we have been concerned in human rights as a faculty with how a dominant and mainstream liberal human rights imaginary also has had its roots in justifying civilizational discourses that have played a key role in imperialism, colonialism, racism, and slavery. And also in the reproduction of racial and colonial hierarchies, not just in the past, but in the present day.

Yet at the same time, we find ourselves engaging with the language, institutions, and practices of human rights as scholars, and also for some of us as organizers and practitioners, as part of our collective efforts to realize anti-colonial and anti-racist futures.

In part, we do that by drawing on an alternate genealogy of human rights that you have also written about, which has its roots in anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles around the world. But we also find ourselves engaging with the very institutions and laws that we often criticize for their inability both to end those hierarchies, but also sometimes to reproduce them.

And there's perhaps no starker example of this than our engagement at the moment as a set of scholars and practitioners with the struggle to end genocide, illegal occupation, and apartheid in Palestine, and our engagement with the anti-colonial struggle for the liberation of Palestine.

Over the past year, we've seen how the very institutions that have been so critical of, we have been so critical of, are playing a key role in bringing Israel to task, in pushing for an end to the bloody atrocities that we've all witnessed over the past year. And this includes the UN, the International Criminal Court, and of course, the International Court of Justice in the landmark case under the Genocide Convention, which our speaker is a part of. We see this even as we recognize the challenges in actually bringing about an end to

to anything because of their ongoing structural dependence on Western power, state power. So what fascinated us so much about the scholarship and work of our speaker this evening is his engagement with the question of law and constitution in the realization of anti-colonial and anti-racist futures. He insists, and I quote here from his book, The Land is Ours, law was not always and exclusively an expression of colonial oppression.

Sometimes it was an antidote to it, as is true today. Whether law can be an instrument of justice is debatable, with a singularly important factor being the agency of the actors. And in the rest of the chapters that follow in this book, he shows how the agency and intent of black lawyers and legal thinkers in early 20th century South Africa tried to use law not as an instrument of oppression, but as its opposite.

In this study and elsewhere, we've been fascinated by his take on the limits and possibilities of law and constitutionalism in bringing about material transformation in colonial and racial order, and by his engagement also lately with the institutions of international law.

So when we decided to invite our speaker this evening, it was in part to think through with him whether such transformations are indeed possible through these structures or whether these structures or whether the conditions through which this law is made possible, international, domestic or otherwise, may in fact work to block real systemic change. So in response to our larger motivation for inviting him, which I've tried to lay out,

Our speaker this evening will be delivering a lecture entitled "From the Eyes of My Native Land: Human Rights, Apartheid, and South Africa in World History." In this lecture, he'll draw from the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa and on a world scale to explore the connections between human rights and the idea of self-determination. While both ideas are local, the lecture will show also how they are global.

South Africa remains a feature of the global world order, trying, as one of its most talented sons, Steve Bantu Biko, once said, to give the world a more human face. So we're all very much looking forward to this lecture. Thank you to our speaker, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Before I hand over a few house rules, we are-- Tambeka here will speak for about 40, 50-- we're sort of debating whether it's 40 or 50 minutes, but we'll see.

Then we're going to have a Q&A from the audience and online. There's instructions online, I believe, about how you can ask. The event is recorded. We may put it out as a podcast. Yeah, I think that's about it. You can tag LSE Human Rights if you tweet. All right, here you go. I'm old school. Good evening.

The lecture tonight is entitled Human Rights Through the Eyes of My Native Land, South Africa in the World. It is a special privilege that I am standing here tonight. I am delighted that the honor to deliver this year's human rights lecture has fallen on me. Yet I am daunted by the challenge of the lecture. And so perhaps at the outset I should pay homage to one of the sons of Africa, Amilcar Cabral.

In one of Cabral's directives to the members of the African Party for the independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde in 1965, at the height of the struggle against the colonial administration of the Portuguese, Cabral wrote, "Tell no lies, expose lies whenever they are told." So as unnerved as I am by the challenge of tonight's talk, I promise at least to tell no lies. I remember the British

In fact, my grandmother also remembers them. So does my mother. My father once worked for them. He remembered, too, their deception, their crookedness, their greed, the horrifying brutality of their methods of killing: the killing of children in war, in peace, the pillage, the plunder of the land, the theft of the tusks of the elephants, the ivory, the hypocrisy, the taking of the cattle,

many, many thousands of cattle, the destruction of entire indigenous economies, the intentional starvation of entire populations, the burning of the fields of peoples to prevent plowing and production, the desecration of graves in African heresy, the lack of respect for the God of the people of Africa. Perhaps what the native people of South Africa remember the most are the lies of the British. They were witnesses. They wrote what they saw.

Take for instance on the 10th of August 1836 the writings of Dr. John Philip, a missionary of the Cape, who reported to the London Missionary Society what he saw: "Extensive districts of the Eastern Cape, once occupied by a large, happy pastoral race, were left without people except the occasional white intruder holding farms of 10,000 acres each.

and enjoying what he called the grim tranquility of empty land. This is how he concluded that dispatch: "If a traveler who had visited South Africa 25 years ago were to take his stand on the banks of the Sandys River and ask what had become of the natives whom he had seen in his former visit, if he would take his stand again on the Fish River and thus extend his views to Kafraria, he might ask the same question:

And were he to take his stand upon the snow mountain behind Khlaf Reynet, he would have heard before him a country containing 40,000 square miles and ask, "Where were the various tribes that he saw there 25 years ago?" No man could tell him where they were. There were many lies that the British told when they occupied and settled over the land of the Africans in the Cape.

building from the lies of other Europeans: the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French. Chief among these was the lie of civilization. And the foundation of civilization was another lie: the superiority of the West and the inferiority of Africa. George Grey, some of you call him "Sey", is a forgotten man today.

In his day, however, he was the most important agent of British imperialism. Knighted for his services in drawing up the Constitution of New Zealand, which placed the land of the Maori under the control of the British. He would be sent to the Cape to pursue the goals of the Empire there. So successful was Gray's policy in New Zealand that one colonial administrator, William Molesworth, could comment already in 1855

that the Maoris were rapidly dying out and that in a generation or so they would be exterminated by European colonization and disease and the problem of the native will be solved. Rapid death, extermination, European colonization. Soon after his arrival at the Cape Colony, Gray expressed his intentions. They were ominous.

His first speech in the British-controlled Parliament of the Cape was met with acclaim in that Parliament and approval here in London. In fact, not far from where we are at Westminster. Yet it was a lie. Gray wanted to "civilize the barbarian races" and to "elevate the savage tribes" that caused my people, the indigenous people of the Eastern Cape,

He said that they should be converted to useful servants, consumers of our goods, contributors to our revenue. In short, a source of strength and wealth for this colony as Providence designed them to be. Providence. And here one can see the underlying colonial philosophy into this word, Providence. It was the wish of God that things be like this.

People of Europe, the British must rule. Native people, the Xhosa, be ruled. God wanted it that way. Yet the Xhosas had no desire to be civilized, no intention to swap their land for the black book with the red mouth containing the word. They were quite content with their own civilization. How did those words get into the book that you tell us about? How did the first man who wrote them know about them?

They asked the missionaries, questions to which there was no reply. The key to civilization, it turns out, was an uncivilized one. In a speech given in March 1853 by Gray, he expressed that the barbarous tribes only respected force. One had to coerce and punish them if they break into revolt or resistance. It was a hopeless job to attempt to elevate and civilize them.

as they attribute kindness to fear and generosity to timidity. Violence as the driving motif of imperialism was not a new idea. Gray did not invent it. He was merely following the prescripts of his more accomplished predecessors in the Southern African region. Recall, for instance, the British governor, Harry Smith, who regarded the extermination of the Xhosa

as the only principle to guide us. He was not the first to make these pronouncements either. In 1812, Lieutenant Colonel John Graham, after whom the famous, perhaps infamous, town of Grahamstown is named, proclaimed the total expulsion of the Kay tribes from His Majesty's territories, a feat that had been achieved with so trifling a loss on our part. While the aggressor

the British would blame the killing on the horrid aggressions committed by the K-Wet, which they had left them with the sole path of violence. The modus was then to accuse the victim of violence as a pretext, and the target went beyond mass killing. It was the destruction of the productive assets of the closer. Take this following record by Robert Hart in January 1812. Friday 17th,

Two parties of a hundred men each were sent to destroy gardens and burn huts and villages. Sunday the 18th, 300 men went early to destroy gardens and huts, taking with them 600 oxen to trample down the covered vegetables in the gardens. Nor was this limited to the British. In the mass killings of German South West Africa, the same methods were at play. The story of Lothar

Van Schotter is remembered as a general in the Second Reich who declared the ethnic cleansing of the Herero and Nama. And this is what he said: "The exercise of violence with class terrorism and even with gruesomeness was and is my politic. I destroy the African tribes with streams of blood and streams of money.

Only following this cleansing can something new emerge which will remain. Although historians routinely refer to the mass killing of the Herero and Nama of today's Namibia as the first unacknowledged genocide of Africa, it is sadly not the first time that the Europeans murdered countless numbers of Africans. At the Berlin Conference in 1885,

The Belgian king, Leopold II, had devised the plan to make the Congo his personal property. The Congo Free State, as it was called, would belong to no European country. Instead, it would be turned into an oasis for free trade, he claimed. Every European country would be free to enter it, conduct business without any restriction.

But while the European countries were looking away, preoccupied with the new possessions that they had gained, the Belgian state would send a private army of 20,000 men, including the Belgians and the local Congolese. They were equipped with rifles, cannons, machine guns, and they enforced the terms of the so-called contracts, so-called treaties, so-called agreements that had been concluded with representatives

of the imperialists there. By 1908, a black man, George Washington Williams, would expose the truth about what had happened to the native people of the Congo. Ten million of them had been killed, tortured, displaced and enslaved in the pursuit of ivory and later rubber. Everywhere then, whether in the Congo Free State or German Southwest Africa,

or in the native land of my own people, South Africa. European colonization was founded by telling lies. The idea of human rights was intended to break these lies. If Europe's prime occupation in South Africa was the pillage, the plunder, the mass killing, where did the idea of rights come from? The first Bill of Rights in South Africa emerged only in 1923.

from the founders of the African National Congress who included Pixlika Izaga Seme, someone who had been educated at Oxford University. Ironically, this document referred to a statement by Cecil John Rhodes under the slogan "Equality of Rights for Every Civilized Man South of the Zambezi". There is power in this paradox.

Rhodes the imperialist was also a native representative in the whites-only parliament of the Cape. He had perfected the art of duplicity, saying one thing and doing the opposite. There was another man who was a truth-teller. By 1941, the African National Congress was led by Alfred "Beteen" Uma. When the National Party became the government in the whites-only election of 1948,

Uma did not see the installation of apartheid as an official ideology of South Africa, as a turning point as such. Instead, for him, this was the inevitable elevation of the aristocracy of the white colour of the skin, which had been established under colonialism. What had now happened was that the government constituted the emblem, he called, of white supremacy.

For Kuma, history could not be reduced into a single event, but constituted a continuum of trajectories. Yet, even for Kuma, there was one event so significant that he seriously entertained the prospect of what he referred to as a common citizenship for all races, where there would be respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Human rights, that phrase...

It was the first time that this phrase was written about in South Africa by a black man before apartheid. And the backdrop is traceable to the events of the 14th of August, 1941. At the height of the Second World War, the leaders of the United States and the United Kingdom, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, agreed on a set of common principles to constitute a better future for the world.

These were contained in a document known as the Atlantic Charter. It contained eight principles to which the United States and the United Kingdom committed themselves. These principles included a commitment to seek no aggrandizement, to seek no territory, to respect self-determination. In fact, the Atlantic Charter contained the statement that

that there shall be no territorial expansion unless it is done with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned. And there was a commitment to respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they live, and to restore the sovereign rights of self-government to those who had been forcibly deprived of them.

Therefore, all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, would be guaranteed access to unequal terms, to trade, to economic prosperity, to human rights. This, of course, was a response to the tyranny of the Nazis. But there was a specific rule. Use of force would be abandoned in settling disputes.

there would be a wider and permanent system of general security which would result in the disarmament of nations so that no one in the future may threaten aggression outside of their frontiers. There was, however, as has become customary with the British, a lie. In 1941, when these principles were agreed, the whole of the African continent was occupied by Europe

While South Africa was not a colony as such, it occupied an ambiguous status as a British dominion with a growing movement to becoming an independent white republic. Rather than ushering a new world as such, what the Atlantic Charter promised was at the very least a set of new normative principles that would underpin the government within and between states.

For native people of South Africa, my people, whose position of subservience had long been entrenched, what resonated with them were Principles 2 and 3 of the Charter. Principle 2 stated that no territorial changes would be made within the states unless they were consistent with the freely expressed wishes of the people concerned.

Principle 3 promised to respect the right of all people to choose the form of government under which they live. Self-government would be restored to those who had forcibly been deprived of it. The lie of the Charter was exposed by another son of South Africa, Didi T. Djabavu, who was an opponent of the Jan Smarts government. Jan Smarts, you see, was a bigoted and a racist man.

who believed that blacks were naturally inferior to whites. The British government, however, revered and honored him as a loyal servant of the empire. Today, in stature, even if not in stature, he stands alongside a truly great man, Nelson Mandela, right in front of Westminster. Mandela and Smuts together, the British government have managed to stitch together another line

To return to Jabal, he argued that the original terms of the Atlantic Charter were couched in grandiose language that easily satisfies complacent communities that find this world a fairly comfortable place to live in. In the case of Africans, the native people, the Charter could only make sense if they were included within its terms. Otherwise, it was nothing more than empty words.

So the question was asked by the native people of my country: Does the Charter apply to us or does the Charter apply only to white-skinned people? Does it apply to the brown-skinned and the flat-nosed? Chababu asked if the Charter would signal the abandon of racial discrimination or not. Roosevelt, the American president,

could perhaps have intended that these principles of the Charter would apply globally, without exception, as an antidote not only to Nazi aggression, but to all forms of tyranny. In fact, he told Winston Churchill that he could not believe that two nations engaged in war against fascism would be opposed to ending colonialism. But Winston Churchill stuck in the duplicitous ways of his ancestors

Rhodes, Smith, Graham, Gray, those fellows. For Churchill, the charter's goal was to liberate the victims of Hitler's fascism. Only those victims, no one else, especially not brown-skinned people. Roosevelt pressed the point further. Peace was not possible if the colonies remained under occupation, that they were being robbed of their raw materials with nothing given back to them.

and that would simply plant the seeds for escalation of conflict. Churchill's position merely stifled. He would not be moved. In the end, the statements of the Atlantic Charter were left hanging with no application to the colonists. Roosevelt, however, made his position plain at a press conference held in 1941. There has never been, there isn't now,

and there never will be any race of people on earth fit to serve as masters over their fellow men. We believe that any nationality, no matter how small, has the inherent right to its own nationhood. How should the British position as espoused by Churchill be understood? Perhaps by talking about Churchill himself. Churchill was a social Darwinist and a disciple of Thomas Carlyle.

one of the racial theorists of Victorian England. Responding to the massacres of the Mau Mau people in Kenya, Churchill advocated the use of even greater force. This is what he said: "It's the power of a modern nation being used to kill savages. It's pretty terrible. Savages, savages, not savages. They are savages filled with ideas much more difficult to deal with.

When the concentration camps were built in South Africa, mainly for the Boers, the Afrikaners, he said that they produced the minimum of suffering despite the death of 26,000 women and children. And although 14,000 Africans also died in the British camps, Churchill merely noted his irritation that the K-WED should be allowed to fire on white men. He would later boast of his experiences in the early days of the Anglo-Boer War.

before it degenerated. This is what he said: "It was great fun galloping about." As a member of parliament during the Second World War, Churchill demanded an escalation of hostilities based on his belief that as civilized nations become more powerful, they will get more ruthless and the time will come when the world will impatiently bear the existence of great barbaric nations.

who may at any time arm themselves and menace barbaric nations, adding that the Aryan stock is bound to triumph. So in 1942, while making grand pronouncements on the world stage about self-determination and equality as contained in the Charter, Churchill in fact had been instrumental in causing the famine in Ben Laar.

killing more than 3 million Indians, arguing that the Indians were a beastly people with a beastly religion who bred like rabbits. It is not surprising that when asked whether the Atlantic Charter would apply to Africans, the native people of my country, Churchill would reply in the negative. After all, he had not become the king's first minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Churchill's view that human rights were good for some, but not all, was familiar in Britain. Yet the ANC, the prime liberation organization in my native land, was aware that in order to break white domination over blacks in South Africa, a new course of action had to be charted on the domestic front. For Nelson Mandela, the charter affirmed

faith in the dignity of each human being and propagated a host of democratic principles. While some in the West saw the Charter as empty promises, Mandela saw the opposite. Those of us in Africa, he stated, were inspired by its terms. Directly arising out of the Charter, South Africa's conception of the Bill of Rights was born. But this had to be translated into reality.

and it was Uma again who was the engine of this translation. His belief, as stated in 1943, was that the test of the people is their aim, not their colour. In 1943, in November, the ANC finished its work on developing the first statement on human rights. Those words again, human rights. A specific demand

was made regarding colonization. Self-government for people that were colonized had to be pursued as a matter of international concern. Undoubtedly, this was the most important principle for Africans, the right of self-determination. There was also a further statement, the statement of the Bill of Rights, full citizenships, rights and demands. And this included the right to vote, the right to own land,

the right to participate in industrial labour, the right to commerce, the right to education, the right to public health, the right to medical services, and the right to be free from discriminatory legislation. For those who have not noticed, this is 1943, almost a decade before the Europeans woke up to the idea. The Bill of Rights was endorsed at the ANC Conference of 1943.

From that moment, it was official policy informing the ANC's vision for human rights in a new South Africa. Soon afterwards, Uma sought a meeting with Jan Smarts to discuss the universalization of the Atlantic Charter, the importation of those principles to native people. Smarts summarily dismissed the idea. He said this was propaganda.

and that he was not prepared to discuss proposals which are widely impracticable. So smarts like Churchill believed that human rights were for some and not for others. History has shown, however, that the white supremacist attitudes of people like smarts and Churchill are ultimately powerless against the movement towards change.

In a post-democratic South Africa, the enduring nature of the African claims inspired by the Atlantic Charter continues to be recognized. Kolema Mutlante, one of the presidents after Nelson Mandela, has drawn parallels between the African claims of South Africa and the Bill of Rights inscribed in its constitution.

noting what he called the continuity of both the aspiration of our people and their loyalty to a particular worldview. He is correct in doing so. Nearly half a century after the adoption of the African claims, in 1989, the ANC adopted what it referred to as the Constitutional Guidelines for a Democratic South Africa.

In doing so, they did not act out of a position of ignorance. Their guiding light was the African Claims of 1943, a document that weathered the storms of colonialism and apartheid. So while the colonial encounter in South Africa was violent and disruptive, its end was on the note of rights. You see,

All of the white violence of the 19th and 20th centuries came to a head on the 21st of March 1960. On that day, it was not Nelson Mandela or the ANC that was at the forefront, but the Pan-Africanist Congress led by Robert Sobukwu. In 1963, the PAC challenged the PASS system.

The pass, for those who don't know, was a document of identification especially reserved for Africans. But it was reviled in black communities. One's entire being was reduced into this document. Although the Africans aspired to a system of rights, the people that constituted the government, the likes of Fervut, took the nation backwards. Under the pass system,

A black person could be stopped and searched everywhere, anytime. They could be detained for not carrying the pass or just beaten up. The enforcers of the pass were young men carrying arms. What they were instructed to do was to humiliate blacks on a daily basis as a reminder of their racial inferiority. Hence, more than anything that had happened before, the pass became a lightning rod to ignite a larger resistance against the system as such.

The March of the 21st of March 1960, led by the PAC, led into a massacre, a killing of at least 87 Africans, injuries of more than 300. But that massacre also sent shockwaves across the world. Smuts had died in 1950, and that was 10 years before the slaughter in Sharpeville. But his legacy of racial hypocrisy would follow him.

South Africa had been part to the creation of a world order. Jan Smarts, in fact, was the central player which had promised civilization. But at home, it was barbarism which disregarded human rights. The killings in Sharpeville were an evil thing. It could only have been perpetrated by people who, to quote George Orwell's 1940 critique of Harry Miller,

to whom murder is at most only a word. It could not be moralized in any way, nor, as later commissions of inquiry proved, could it provide its own morale. It was simply an act of evil. Yet even acts of evil teach us something. Some, in a world which had tolerated and endorsed apartheid as a solution to the problem of race, could not continue after Sharpeville.

The first major international act was to put apartheid itself on trial, literally on trial before a court of law. The odd thing about apartheid is that its leaders yearned for international acceptability as a state which adhered to the rule of law. Two African states, Ethiopia and Liberia, brought a case against the Union of South Africa.

at the International Court of Justice under the mandate system. It's an obnoxious thing. Smuts had secured South Africa's mandate over the German territory of the Southwest Africa. As for the British, they had secured for themselves the mandate over the territories of Palestine, Iraq, Cameroon and Togo. Before the ICJ, the case against the Union of South Africa was simple. By its laws and regulations, it had practiced apartheid

which distinguished as to race, color, national or tribal origin. Apartheid was in violation of the obligations of South Africa in Article 2 of the mandate and Article 22 of the covenant of the League of Nations not to discriminate against native people. As such, it had a duty to seize the practice of apartheid in the territory.

Ruma's notions of self-determination permeated the charge against South Africa, which was also charged for treating South West Africa inconsistently with the international status of the territory, and thereby impeded the opportunities for self-determination in the inhabitants of the territory. That case would only be decided in 1966, although it was instituted in 1960. South Africa then placed a jurisdictional hurdle in the way

Neither Liberia nor Ethiopia had any specific interest on whether or not South Africa was in violation of the treaty it argued. It was only those states that were specifically affected by the conduct of South Africa that could bring a case. This argument carried the day. The court, which was sharply divided, ruled in favor of South Africa against Ethiopia and Liberia.

on the basis that neither state could prove a legal right or an interest pertaining to them in the subject matter of the claims. By the president's casting vote, the ICJ redacted the claims of the Empire of Ethiopia and the Republic of Liberia. But in political terms, this case was a watershed. The judgment entrenched and gave legal validity to white power.

Now apartheid also received a moral stature of some sort. You see, law not only validates a position, it also legitimizes it. Then, and perhaps now, when judges spoke, they were taken at their word because of the presumption of the objectivity of their decisions. South Africa's march towards human rights is incomplete.

Its own constitution provides for an extensive set of social and economic rights. It is a promise for equality. Yet we know that racialized structural inequalities persist. For instance, in 2018, the World Bank noted that South Africa, post-apartheid, is the most unequal society in the world, with 76% of the population living in poverty.

30% of the population is chronically poor, and an overwhelming number of those classified as non-poor face the risk of slipping into the chronically poor category. Race, gender, and income disparity explain the depth of South Africa's inequality. Africans, the native people, are at the highest risk of being poor.

Children, large families and people living in rural areas are especially vulnerable to remaining impoverished for lengthy periods. Poverty is also gendered in South Africa. The incidence of poverty is higher for African women. Most municipalities in the 20 poorest local municipalities are in specific regions in the Eastern Cape where the empire began, in Limpopo and in KwaZulu-Natal.

Of these, the ten poorest municipalities are in the former homelands, highlighting the enduring legacy not just of apartheid but of colonization. From the World Bank report, it seems that the future for the poor is also bleak. That is because wealth and poverty transfer across generations. At least a third of all children born to every poor parent will likely remain poor, while the children of rich parents will likely become rich themselves.

So wealth calcifies at the top and does not automatically trickle down. Since generally, and I say generally, whites are at the top and Africans at the bottom of the economic ladder, the calcification means the continuation of white wealth and their poverty. We know this to be a product of colonization and apartheid, to be a product of the asset theft that took place over 350 years.

But I can also speak about truth and human rights today. Nelson Mandela also spoke the truth, not only about South Africa, a country he spent much of his life fighting for, but he spoke about Palestine. The freedom of the people of South Africa is not complete, he declared, unless the people of Palestine are free. Meaning that we do not have to first choose to resolve the problems of inequality in South Africa before Palestine.

We support Palestine. This is why, despite the disappointment of 1966, for South Africa, the ICJ has remained the site for truth-telling. On the 19th of February 2024, the ICJ had the request of the United Nations General Assembly for an advisory opinion on the question of the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel

of the rights of the Palestinians to self-determination from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the democratic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem and from its adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures. This was a replay we had seen this movie before

South Africa intervened in the case on the side of Palestine. Perhaps the intervention was in fulfillment of South Africa's new international legal obligations. Perhaps also it was an act of redemption, an act to redeem itself from the shameful episode of 1966. Its arguments were straightforward. They were an act of truth-telling. First, Israel is an occupying power.

Second, that as an occupying force, it must act in accordance with the law of occupation. Third, that an occupying force must act in the best interest of the population under occupation and must administer the occupied territory in good faith. By its conduct, South Africa argued, Israel had acted in disrespect of the rules of international law. Hence, the permanent nature of Israel's occupation of Palestine was illegal per se.

As for the principle of self-determination, a principle that was so central to South Africa's own struggle against colonial domination, there was no equivocation, only truth-telling. This is South Africa's submission to the ICJ. The right to self-determination, also called the Magna Carta of decolonization, is an established and inalienable right in and fundamental principle of international law.

The respect for this principle is one of the purposes of the United Nations, Article 1, Paragraph 2 of the Charter. Self-determination accrues to a people, and the Palestinians constitute a distinct national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Like everyone else, the Palestinians are too entitled to self-determination. Like we once were entitled to self-determination.

The submissions of South Africa in February 2024 at the ICJ go back to Kumar's idea: self-determination is a first-order human right for South Africans and for the Palestinians. The permanent occupation and the conduct of Israel as an occupying force conflicts with the principles of international law. That case we now know

enabled the court to vindicate its role as a moral voice of the world when it said some things that have long been obvious to many. Racial discrimination, illegal occupation of land, unlawful usurpation of territory is wrong. It is wrong as a matter of morality. It is also wrong as a matter of law.

In its ruling, the court not only ruled that the illegal occupation should end, it also stressed the obligation on Israel to ensure the rights of self-determination of the people in the occupied Palestinian territories. But it was also to the world that the court spoke, instructing them to assist the people of Palestine to achieve their self-determination. But the duplicity, the hypocrisy continues.

There is of course the matter of South Africa versus the State of Israel in the application of the Convention for the Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Legal ethics prevent me from talking about the case. There are some notorious facts, however, worthy of recounting. There is so much duplicity about what is going on in Palestine.

Take for instance the recent announcement by the International Criminal Court to issue the arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu. The legal position is that a member state is obliged to give effect to the decisions of the court, which means it is obliged to arrest him whenever they see him. That is what happened to Bosco Dangada, to Jun Pierre Pemba, to Omar Ali Bashir, and to all of those from Africa.

They were arrested where they were found. Yet, if what I have said today about 19th century Britain is anything to go by, it is no surprise that no European country has committed to arrest Netanyahu. We are back in the same old European double standards. European duplicity aside, there are some truths that cannot be denied. When South Africa approached the ICJ,

This month, a year ago, 25,700 Palestinians had been killed. Over 63,000 Palestinians had been injured. Over 360,000 housing units had been destroyed. And 1.7 million people had been displaced. And for those still trumpeting the drums of self-defense, one must ask,

At what stage does the killing stop? Is it after 50,000 people have died? Is it after 20,000 have been killed? Is it after 15,000 women have been killed? You see, the West has long normalized the killing of brown people. And its refusal to speak the truth is part and parcel of a pattern that has lasted more than 300 years. Now, a year after the 26th January judgment, we have been reminded that nothing has changed.

and we are told that in fact things are worse. In this context we are asked whether law in fact can become an antidote to war. And here one can, with some justification, defend the institution of law. We need to look at a court as an institution of legal and moral authority. We need to ask whether the ICJ has affirmed its place as a forum of international justice.

Political actors routinely attempt to delegitimize institutions of law. We should also recall that law is not an end in itself. It is part of a larger political repertoire. Law does not replace popular struggles for freedom, but supports and supplements them. People do not demobilize during the legal phase of the struggle, but galvanize around it. Institutions of law, the courts, are also forums of truth-telling.

Before the case was heard, scholars said, perhaps with some justification, that international law would also be put on trial, not just the State of Israel. It is too early to say whether international law has survived the trial, whether international law is now stronger or weaker. For us in the Global South, the challenge is to make international law also a forum to expose the doublespeak of the West.

I came here to make an attempt to defend the idea of human rights and its function of truth-telling. But I've ended up defending human rights and self-determination. The people of Palestine are asking us for both. Thank you.

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Thank you so much for, I think we can all agree, a very insightful and historically grounded talk that I think that a lot of us will sit with for quite a while. I have the fortunate or unfortunate responsibility of asking the first question, and I'm like, I definitely need some time to process. But I think that what I'll open with, and while everybody else also prepares some of their questions, is

kind of where you ended, which is a take which you haven't fully concluded or formed a conclusion on about the relationship between law and the struggle for self-determination and human rights. Which also in the quote that I read up from your book, you say, law is not necessarily always a tool of oppression, but it's debatable whether it's a tool of justice.

And I'd like you to speak a little bit more about that, and especially some of your own experiences both as a scholar and a practitioner in navigating what I think you seem to say is a terrain of duplicity. It can go either way, whether it's the ICJ or even courts in South Africa or elsewhere. How does, how do you, if you could say a little bit more about that and open us up

There is a British historian, he's actually a Marxist, E.P. Thompson, who wrote about the origins of the Black Act. And I think it's the last chapter which is headed, The Rule of Law. And in that chapter he says, I mean, he's obviously very critical of The Rule of Law. I'm also critical of The Rule of Law. But he ultimately concludes that The Rule of Law is an unqualified public good. It's an unqualified public good.

And what that means is an unqualified public good. It's actually good for the working class, good for the poor, for the underprivileged. But in their hands, in their hands, there's power in their hands. But in today's lecture I was thinking about the other function of law, which is the truth-telling function.

Because if you actually are trying to figure out, well, how many forums do I have in the world for truth-telling? If there's so much lying, duplicity at the United Nations, at the Security Council, where is the forum for truth-telling? The forum for truth-telling happens to be the same forum for justice. And so it's in that sense that when I look at

what the native people of South Africa began saying is that all of these things you've been telling us about are lies. But what they needed was a forum, a place to say that these are lies. So I can talk about myself, if you allow me. I don't think that there is anything that could sort of equal the ability to stand in front of 17 judges.

and tell them that what you've had is a lie, this is the truth. And then to watch them recording it and delivering it. It is a very powerful thing. So, so I'm simply... So, so Nelson Mandela could, could establish an army, you know, go to the bush and fight. Most of us can't. And so, but there are institutions that we could, we could use. And ultimately it doesn't matter what the judgment is, you know.

Because that's also another wrong way of looking at the law. You know, we look at the judgment. Whereas if you actually understand the law as simply an aspect of a larger political repertoire, so it's politics by other means. But the function that it is playing is the function of truth-telling. So that's what I was trying to say today. And the inspiration is Ibi Thompson, who understands the rule of law as an unqualified public good. I've quoted him. It's just that I didn't think...

I thought the quotations should go to Mandela rather than Eddie Thompson. I'm going to open it up to the audience if anybody has any questions so that we have as much time as possible for conversation. Yes, Susie. Thank you so much. Very insightful and meaningful. I'm a migration scholar.

and was in the room this past week with migration scholars from South Africa. And I wanted to think a little bit with you about this idea of self-determination and how distorted it's become across the globe in relation to the border and the figure of the migrant. I know it's not an easy question, but I would love to hear your views on that. Thank you. Well, certainly in my... It's an imperfect answer.

The legal answer is actually from the Freedom Charter. It says South Africa belongs to all who live in it. So it's not ownership by birth, it's ownership by residence. So live in it. And our legal system is also designed around the idea that anyone who is within our territory borders is entitled to the protections of our law.

which sometimes means that the politicians will stop you at the border from entering because once you are inside then you are protected by law. But I think the deeper problem is the problem of structural inequality because if you actually look at where the

The conflicts are the really deep-seated conflicts about migration. They are in the poorest areas of Johannesburg, in the townships like Alex. And that's where you see all of these flare-ups as well. And even if you try to trace it further and see what economic sectors are affected, it's people in the informal economy. So it's true that

Basically, this appears as a problem of othering, but I think it's overlaid in a very complicated way with an underlying economic problem. Economically, South Africa has been on a decline for more than 15 years. We've had no electricity, massive levels of unemployment, massive levels of social instability. We had a quote-unquote uprising in July of

2021 which is also attributable to this entrenched levels of poverty. So it seems to me that, I mean I'm not one of those who believe that everything is class and everything else is secondary, but I really do think that there's a problem with the structural inequality which expresses itself sometimes as a problem of othering.

I don't know where it's going to end because I think the first thing is we start by saying where the Nigerians must go and then, all right, where the Nigerians are going, okay, where the Zimbabweans must also go, where the Zimbabweans are going, okay, so who else here must also go? You know, out of those that are left, maybe the Zulus must go, maybe the Xhosa's must go, so I don't know where it's going to go. But I think my explanation of it is that unless you attend to the problem of economic inequality,

got to accept that it will manifest in xenophobia. Yeah, back there. Openware.

Hi, thank you. First of all, thank you so much for your truth-telling. It's such a privilege to have heard you speak. And also I want to take the opportunity to say thank you for you and the South Africa team for the incredible work that you did in the ICJ ongoing. Thank you.

It was such a powerful intervention at a time when a lot of people were losing hope. So I think a lot of your words about the role of that truth-telling resonates. My question is in relation to actually some arguments that I saw made by some scholars, actually. I follow their accounts on social media. Some of them are colleagues. And I think it's important to know that there are some people

The arguments I just want to preface, I don't agree with them, but it's also would be really interesting to hear your thoughts on what kind of response could be given, which was that it's all very well for South Africa to bring forward this case against Israel, but then they started to put forward

South Africa's own problems domestically, internationally, alluding to examples of corruption, mistreatment of different communities in South Africa, issues of poverty, etc. And then using that to delegitimize South Africa's ability to bring this case forward as if those who do the truth-telling actually also have to be

examples of justice in their own actions. So who has the right to bring these cases forward? Who has the right to do this truth telling? And what legitimizes that? And we saw that even with the

whole swathe of global south countries that then united in their support of bringing this case against Israel to the ICJ and supporting the charges of genocide, but so many of them with their own histories of being colonized and abuses against them had also carried out their own injustices against various communities. So how do you, how does one respond to those claims? Thank you so much.

- Look, that's really excellent. Thank you for raising that. It's actually not even an argument outside, it's also an argument at home. Why are you spending all of this money flying to The Hague? We've got problems here of unemployment, et cetera. You know what it's like. Those people actually have jobs. I'm not telling you that they have problems of unemployment. All of them have jobs. All is fine, very fine.

No, I think there are two answers. I mean, the one is Mandela. I know the youth these days are very critical of Mandela, which I also find funny. But Mandela remains the embodiment of how you navigate a treacherous world because of his statement that he does not regard himself as a perfect human being. He acknowledges that he has imperfections.

But it does not require perfection in order to seek the freedom and the liberation of his own people. It has never been a requirement, it has never been a precondition. So he accepts that. So South Africa must accept that it is an imperfect player in the world. But it should not put its own perfection as a precondition to intervene in the face of genocide.

So that's the first thing for South Africa in their defense. The second thing is that it is a horror what is going on in Palestine. It is truly horrific. The Palestinian children are not asking whether you are perfect when you are running a case for them. But the people there that are being massacred on a day-to-day basis are not judging us.

And we are not taking their struggle away from them, we are contributing to it. Think about this, you know South Africa was under apartheid. It was first colonialism and apartheid. But let's take the period of apartheid, which is where the white people really got purified, their ideology. If you were to ask my mother or my father who were the direct victims of apartheid,

whether or not they cared that Libya had human rights issues. They would have told you that they don't. But who is speaking? You know, who is speaking? What happens is the same old duplicitous West. Remember Nelson Mandela, he was asked by a journalist, what do you say about Gaddafi and oil and money, etc. And then he said, but where were you when we were in the struggle? Gaddafi was with us.

So I think that the Palestinians will remember those who stood with them and not those who stood on the side and criticized those who were with them. So those two should motivate you that with your own imperfections. We are all individually. You know what happened? What's your name again? Jasmine. You know what happened, Jasmine?

The list was announced in South Africa in the media. These are the lawyers that will represent South Africa. And they started asking, what do they know about international law? I imagine if we had said, no, no, I'm not going to do it. So I think you have to accept that all the time. You have to accept that I go into this battle with my own imperfections. But I don't need the perfection in order to go into it. So we've embraced it.

But we think that actually children of Palestine don't care. Thank you. Question there. Hello, Mr. Mugatobi. I'm South African myself and I wanted to ask you, you know... Also, I should have said before, do share your name and so forth. My name is Letoghule. So I wanted to ask you, obviously, as you've spoken about South Africa as a country that still is battling with a lot of the legacies of colonialism and apartheid.

And what do you think is missing from the post-liberation project? I know we're talking a lot about, you know, the struggle for liberation itself, but what do you think is missing in the post-liberation project that has resulted in countries like us, Zimbabwe, not achieving, you know, the promises of liberation, even though the underlying principles and knowledge of what we need is there?

And with that, what then would you say to the people of Palestine in a hopeful future where they achieve liberation that they should not do that we have done to achieve proper liberation? Yeah, I mean, I think, I suppose, all right, let's put Palestine aside. I think that the Palestinian question is, it's not complex because it's easy to see

the horrors that are committed. And it's easy to know that these people that have been talking about a two-state solution are lying about it. That's easy to say, right? That this is all false, it's lies, it's duplicity. So the moral questions they do not give me is the most nice. It's clear what the answers are, right? And often we complicate it in order to avoid making the moral judgments, you know, whereas the answers are staring us in the face. The South African problem you are asking

And in fact, I deliberately did that section of showing that South Africa is grappling with the problems of transition, right? But it did not need to resolve the problems of transition to intervene in Palestine. Because I know that some people will argue that you've sugar coated the problems you've presented South Africa as a perfect oasis of peace and prosperity.

But it is a different discussion we should be having one day. We should have a different discussion we should be having. I think that the primary problem was a problem of the structure of the transition. I think the structure of the transition where we did not resolve the economic fundamentals of the transition and we left them for a future state.

And it was naive in a sense because you assumed that private capital would cooperate in the process of rebuilding and establishing the new democratic state. What you didn't expect is that what capital would do, which is one of the points I tried to make, capital would reproduce. So there was a time when

when they introduced the macroeconomic strategy called Gith. And the phrase that was famous at the time was "Triple down." So it's clear there's no triple down, right? It stays in the same family. What is there now is calcification.

You know, it's calcification. So that's the nature of capitalism. So in other words, every time you try to push it, it reacts. Every time you try to push it, it reacts. So I think in part it's the naivety of the transition. There are other problems of corruption which the State Capture Commission has exposed. But I don't think they fully explain the gravity of the racialized inequality in South Africa.

They may give some indications, but they don't fully explain. The gravity is explained only by the structure. Okay, now I can tell people have... So maybe we should collect a few questions. We can start from that end. Would you be okay with collecting three or four? Yes.

And please do share your name, affiliation, and things like that. Hi, my name is Sonia Ongu. I'm one of the lecturers in law school.

I am a pessimist about law. I don't believe that it offers us, it is the vehicle for justice. So I was really interested in what you had to say about law as a forum for truth telling. It gives me another way to think about law. And you know what you said about it is just one tool in this broader kind of repertoire. But I suppose I'm always looking for ways to maybe find some hope for law. I'm

I think I'm pessimistic also about finding those. But I guess my question is, if law, the courts, the ICJ is the forum for truth telling, I'm not overly optimistic about the world. And when I say the world, I don't mean the people. I mean those with the power to actually stop this genocide. I'm not overly optimistic that they will listen to our truths.

And I'm sure, I don't only speak for myself, the all-consuming rage of people watching, you know, the world watching children being slaughtered, I cannot see how they're not listening. So we're standing up, we use law, we use the courts, we tell the truth, and then still...

nothing happens, nothing is done. So I guess my question, apart from a rant, is where do we go then? Yes, okay, let's tell the truth, and then what? Where do you envisage that? And I guess in terms of the courts, in terms of law, or just what do we do? How do we stop this? I suppose it depends. Do you want to take it? Oh, yes, I do.

Sorry, okay, we're coming to you Simon.

Thank you very much. My name is Shafiq. I'm a PhD student at the law school. I'm from Ghana. And my question goes in some ways on what the previous speaker was asking. But mine is from the point of view of the global financial architecture. That's what my research is in looking at how law constructs global finance and justice and human rights constitutions in that space.

if law is more, I mean, if law's remedial power is as a truth-telling tool, as regards how global South countries navigate sovereign financing and the challenges that come with credit rating and the inequalities in this, how does truth-telling, how does law's function as truth-telling remedies its

I mean the plunder of rule of law like you mentioned. How do we, so basically my question is like was that analysis there, especially as a Global South lawyer, like how do you go about that analysis? - Thank you. And we'll take one more.

There was one hand up there. Oh, sorry. Okay. Go ahead. Cool. Thank you so much for that very illuminating lecture, Advocate Nwetobi. My name is Lindowut Lehadebe. I'm also from South Africa. I'm doing my LLM here. Well, I was just coming by that both of you are Lindowut. So you correctly state that South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world.

And that this structural inequality, I think, you know, usually morses into some kind of human rights violation. And what I've, you know, in the context of my research, what I've noticed is that there's a lot of criticism, a lot of scholarship that has emerged, especially from the constitutional abolitionist school of thought, which lays the blame on the Constitution and its failure to transform and radicalize

you know, the socioeconomic landscape of South Africa. And I just want to know, is it the role of the Constitution to alleviate the social and economic disparities of a society, especially in South Africa? What are your thoughts on that? May I ask you if you can -- can you take any more, or do you think this is enough?

Because I think, how many hands are up if you could just raise your hands? One, two. Okay, why don't you take this round and then we'll get the last two. Yeah, thank you very much. Let me just start with Sanya's point about pessimism. That, by the way, is a very healthy position to be in. Because I think we all start there at being very pessimistic about

In part, what you are saying resonates with me and in a sense my speech is a retreat from ambition to modesty, right? About the possibility of law and therefore the function of truth telling is an attainable function, you see? Because there is an ambitious role for law, right? And I don't subscribe to that ambitious role for law.

And I also situate law in a larger ecosystem of a lot of things that must take place, you know, but law being one of them, it is one of them. I don't accept the Marxist school of thought that regards law as an opium, or what Fred Marx called it, a superstructure, right, yeah, which rests on an economic substructure.

I don't accept that either. I think law is much more sinuous than the role that it plays in society. So what are we going to do about those people that are not stopping the violence? Now, people from where I come from have seen the violence over 300 years. What they are now witnessing is structural violence. But, you know, every time I go to speak to... Most of my work is working with communities.

against mining companies, against the state. When I go to them, I am always amazed at how hopeful they are about the possibility of law. And I always tell myself that I have no right not to be optimistic on their behalf. Somebody wrote to me today saying that he's a British filmmaker. He's coming to Johannesburg. Could I see him? So I said, what's it about? No, I've done a film.

on the case you did for the communities of Pondoland against Shell. So Shell was blasting the seas, they call it seismic blasting, they blast the seas, they say they're looking for oil and the communities fought against that. And won. Not once or twice, but three times. Won all the way. And they've stopped them. So this is now being used globally as an example of the power of law. And every time they say that I say no, no, no, no, no, no, it's not

I always say no, it's because when we came into the case as lawyers, we came last. It was a sustained community struggle over ten years. But we come last and then because the TV is looking at us, they think it's us, but we're just the spokesperson's mouthpiece. We talk a lot. So if you accept that my premise, which is the function of law is truth-telling and the role of law

is that it's an aspect of a larger political ecosystem. And at least you have a reason to be optimistic about achieving those two goals. But I also think that if you speak to my clients, you then have no right to be pessimistic about their belief in what the law will do for them.

When we were at the... So I can't talk about the merits of the case. I know the people that are trying to trap me into the... I'm not falling for it. But in the evening, one of the evenings, I think it's the evening, either the evening when we spoke or when Israel responded, we went to the Palestinian embassy and we spoke to people from Palestine. Some of them were living in exile.

They were actually in tears to see us and so grateful for what we were doing. Even though we ourselves think that what we are doing is actually tiny compared to what they are going through and what they are doing to liberate themselves. Because those people have been engaged in war to fight for their own liberation. So we have no right to be pessimistic about the possibility of these interventions.

We have no right because they themselves are saying they think this matters. They think it matters to go to the ICG. They think it matters to lodge a complaint at the ICC. They think it matters to go back even after the fourth, we've got four provisional measures. They still think it matters to go for the fifth one. And they think that it matters to go to the Security Council again. It matters to go to UNRWA again.

So I think in that context then, I don't have any right to do this. I don't have the ability to say, this thing doesn't work. I must wake up, I must go and knock again. So in the context of my own people, and this is the point I tried to make at the beginning, to say basically the script is being replayed, but this is a script we've all seen before. And where it ended in South Africa, maybe you could say that even there it ended up inconclusively.

but the level of naked brutality is gone. And that is the wish we have for the people of Palestine. And as we sit here, sitting in London, we are not entitled to give up. Now, Shafiq, what you are saying is really excellent, but I don't have answers for you. So I think I must duck that one. And then, Lindobud...

I would love to have a fuller conversation with you about abolitionism, because I'm still trying to grasp the concept of constitutional abolition. Because the reason I'm saying I'm still trying to grasp it is because when I ask the proponents of the idea what will come after it, you know what happens? They say another constitution. So then I don't take them seriously.

Okay, so I'm going to allow, with everybody's permission, to go five minutes over. If we can have brief questions and brief answers from the last two. Okay, so then I'll definitely keep my answers short. Yes. Go ahead. Thank you so much. I just want to talk about something you've been saying, but you have been sort of saying...

with everything, like what's the point? You know, it's principle, you know, there's issues at home. What would you say to those that are in different, how can we make a point that's, that's the needs that we can do with the privilege that we have? - Thank you, and then over here. - Hi, my name is Marie. Thank you so much for your work and for the work that you've done. My question is,

You said that the role of law is truth telling and not so much that you're convinced by its capability to give justice. And I feel like, at least in South Africa, that's how I saw the truth in reconciliation, that it was a lot about truth telling, but it was, as you say, incomplete in its justice. And if I look at

and this is a different context and completely different, but then in the Rwandan courts, that this was kind of a more local site of law and justice. And a lot more people are convinced by that process of justice at a community level. And you spoke about your engagement with local communities.

How would you reflect on your kind of engagement with law at both this really high like International Court of Justice and then at the kind of community level if you could reflect on the differences and how you saw justice happening there differently? I'll ask for a brief reflection and then maybe also a brief concluding remark from you. All right, thank you very much. Well, Hanan, I mean, how do you make more people convinced

You know, in 1952, I think, Nelson Mandela, I know I'm referring to Mandela again, but Mandela is the great revolutionary of the 20th century. Don't let anyone tell you anything different.

Nelson Mandela began the anti-pass campaign. I think he declared himself as a volunteer in chief. Everyone would leave the passes, there would be a mass boycott. And they would defeat apartheid with this boycott. So they then organized themselves, a group of them, and they declared a date. From this date, the boycott begins.

They go there, nobody shows up. And then they start asking themselves, is this thing worth it? Because no one is here. And they call it off. And then Walter Sasulu, who was Nelson Mandela's comrade then, reminds them that a revolution takes a few, not a many. It takes a few. The many join the revolution in the middle, but what we want

are the leaders of the revolution. That's what we want. We want the leaders of the revolution. The masses will come, but what we are expecting from you, the people doing the thinking, the strategizing, we want Lenins. Those are the people we want. So I understand your point about getting everyone on board, but I think you have to be realistic about what you can achieve and what you actually need for the struggle to move forward.

The struggle needs a few very committed people who are clear about what they want and who are committed to achieving it. And it's them who then provide clarity to the rest. So my sense about talking to... I talk a lot to university students in South Africa, is to encourage them to play this leadership role because they have the unique privilege, especially in an unequal country, racially unequal in South Africa,

the unique privilege of university education when you've got the privilege here of being in one of the top institutions in the world so what is expected of us is leadership so that's enough so if you are able to achieve that

In other words, we shouldn't be disappointed that we didn't have more people. I actually said to my vishnu that before we came here, I said, "I think we're going to have ten people." And the hall is full. So in other words, I came prepared to talk to ten people. And then, Morin, that's also an excellent point that you are raising about the... So I think law has a role to play in justice.

But that role to play in justice is not... It's necessary, law, to be involved in the discussion about justice, but it's not the complete picture. For justice, you need many other things. Law is simply one of the things that you need. And sometimes when we talk law, you know, sometimes we're talking about courts and institutions of law. So I try to limit that as well to law as...

as practiced through the institutions, but not necessarily the political work where the politicians pass laws, but talking about the role of lawyers, people like me who wear guns.

the judges who are also wearing gloves. So in that sense, what is the role of that institution? I see that institution has played a very limited role, but an important one and an essential one without which there can be no justice. But it's contributing to a larger set of other institutional role players. So that's the point I was trying to make there. The TFC was primarily a political institution and not a legal institution.

It was a primary political institution. It is debatable today in South Africa whether or not it succeeded even on its primary function of truth telling. Next year, in fact if you've been following South Africa recently, there's probably three or four apartheid inquests that have been reopened because everybody who went, not everyone, many people who went to the truth commission lied.

They got amnesty by lying. Others did not go to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so that's why they're being reopened. In June next year, in fact, about two months ago, I went to the Steve Lieber Foundation, and I also got to learn that there are discussions to reopen the Steve Lieber inquest.

but there is another inquest that has been reopened the cradle for inquest it's happening in june next year full month of an inquest it's one of the most horrific uh murders of uh and our apartheid right that will be reopened so a lot of those inquests are being reopened precisely because of the defects in the truth and reconciliation commission process but the point is that it was a political process but it was a necessary process

without which the use of Africa was not possible. But we must now engage with it. And then lastly, your point about the international law versus community. I feel much better when I am with communities. And I feel I'm making an impact in the sense that you can measure it because it's immediate. It's immediate.

Now, the international law front, it's not immediate, but it's nevertheless important because it's contributing to a range of other things that must happen. And if, for instance, you think now the discourse at UNGA or the Security Council, routinely now the rulings of the ICJ are the foundation for political discussion.

for reforms of the United Nations, for strengthening of the United Nations, for reforms of the Security Council. The rulings of the SSJ are contributing to that conversation. And actually for global peace, that's the point I was trying to make here about Churchill, despite all of his other problems, and Roosevelt, what they thought was necessary to end war was a reorganization of the global order.

Even today, that's still the idea. If you want to end war, you have to reorganize the global order. For as long as you've got one or two, I mean, America basically can do whatever it wants. Israel is a spoiled child. No one can say no to Israel. They constantly give it whatever it wants. But the only solution there is the reorganization of the global order. And the ICJ in that discussion is very, very central. But as a forum for truth-telling,

And it's driven that way by lawyers from the global south. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening. You can subscribe to the LSE Events podcast on your favorite podcast app and help other listeners discover us by leaving a review. Visit lse.ac.uk forward slash events to find out what's on next. We hope you join us at another LSE event soon.