Human Rights in Africa: Contemporary Debates and Struggles

342 Pages·2019·3.01 MB·English

by  Eunice N. Sahle

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN
POLITICAL ECONOMY
HUMAN RIGHTS
IN AFRICA
CONTEMPORARY DEBATES
AND STRUGGLES
EDITED BY
EUNICE N. SAHLE
Contemporary African Political Economy
Series Editor
Eunice N. Sahle
University of North Carolina Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Contemporary African Political Economy (CAPE) publishes social science
research that examines the intersection of political, social, and economic
processes in contemporary Africa. The series is distinguished especially
by its focus on the spatial, gendered, and cultural dimensions of these
processes, as well as its emphasis on promoting empirically situated
research. As consultancy-driven work has emerged in the last two decades
as the dominant model of knowledge production about African politics
and economy, CAPE offers an alternate intellectual space for scholarship
that challenges theoretical and empirical orthodoxies and locates politi-
cal and economic processes within their structural, historical, global, and
local contexts. As an interdisciplinary series, CAPE broadens the field of
traditional political economy by welcoming contributions from the fields
of Anthropology, Development Studies, Geography, Health, Law, Political
Science, Sociology and Women’s and Gender Studies. The Series Editor
and Advisory Board particularly invite submissions focusing on the follow-
ing thematic areas: urban processes; democracy and citizenship; agrarian
structures, food security, and global commodity chains; health, education,
and development; environment and climate change; social movements;
immigration and African diaspora formations; natural resources, extrac-
tive industries, and global economy; media and socio-political processes;
development and globalization; and conflict, displacement, and refugees.
Series Editor Eunice N. Sahle is Associate Professor with a joint appoint-
ment in the Department of African, African American and Diaspora
Studies and the Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA.
Advisory Board
Bertha O. Koda, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Brij Maharaj, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
Thandika Mkandawire, London School of Economics and Political
Science, UK
James Murombedzi, Cassandra Veney, United States International
University-Africa, Kenya
John Pickles, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
Wisdom J. Tettey, University of British Columbia, Canada
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14915
Eunice N. Sahle
Editor
Human Rights
in Africa
Contemporary Debates and Struggles
Editor
Eunice N. Sahle
University of North Carolina
Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Contemporary African Political Economy
ISBN 978-1-137-58313-0 ISBN 978-1-137-51915-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51915-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018953104
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
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A
cknowledgements
I would like to thank the contributors to this volume for their diligent
work on their chapters and their support as I put the project together.
Additionally, thank you to the Dean’s Office, College of Arts and
Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a research
grant that made a significant difference in the publication of this vol-
ume. I would like to thank Distinguished Professor Jonathan Hartlyn
for his support of my research endeavors during his time as the Senior
Associate Dean for Social Sciences and Global Programs in the Dean’s
Office. Further, thanks to Kari Dahlgren and Wilma Malya for their con-
tributions to this volume, and to Angela Pietrobon for her outstanding
copyediting work. I would also like to thank Stephanie Fore and Ayana
Brown for their logistical support. Finally, the emergence of this volume
is a result of extensive conversations with human rights scholars and lead-
ers in Eastern and Southern Africa, particularly in Malawi and Kenya.
As such, special thanks to Ollen Mwalubuju, Vera Chirwa, Hon. Willy
Mutunga, and Seodi White.
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Eunice N. Sahle
Part I Contemporary Developments and Human Rights
2 Human Rights States and Societies: A Reflection from
Kenya 19
Willy Mutunga
3 New Constitutional Order, Rights and Environmental
Justice in South Africa 59
David Hallowes
4 Transitional Justice, Gender-Based Violence,
and Women’s Rights 89
Evelyn Fanneron, Eunice N. Sahle and Kari Dahlgren
5 Sexual Minorities, Human Rights, and Public Health
Strategies in Africa 145
Marc Epprecht
vii
viii CONTENTS
6 Sino-African Relations and the Problem of Human
Rights 171
Ian Taylor
Part II Human Rights Norms: Emergence, Features
and Tensions
7 Africa’s Contribution to the Development of
International Human Rights and Humanitarian Law 203
Frans Viljoen
8 On Kéba M’Baye and the Right to Development at 30 231
Eunice N. Sahle
9 Beyond Human Rights Ideology: Struggles
for Freedom of Expression in Africa 259
Jane Duncan
10 The UN’s Human Right to Water in the Context of New
Water Governance Regimes in South Africa and Tanzania 285
Eunice N. Sahle, Mary Galvin, Benjamin Pierce and
Kara Todd
Index 331
n c
otes on ontributors
Kari Dahlgren is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Anthropology at the London School of Economics. Her broad inter-
ests include the politics of representation, critical development studies,
and the anthropological study of natural resources. Her current research
focuses on temporal politics and the impact of commodity markets on
coal mining communities in Australia.
Jane Duncan is a Professor in the Department of Journalism, Film and
Television at the University of Johannesburg. Before that she worked
at Rhodes University. She has also worked for many years in the NGO
sector, and directed the Freedom of Expression Institute from 2001 to
2009. She has three postgraduate degrees, including a Ph.D. from the
Wits School of the Arts.
Marc Epprecht is a Professor and Head of the Department of Global
Development Studies at Queen’s University. He has published extensively
on the history of gender and sexuality in Africa, including Hungochani:
The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa (winner of the
2006 Joel Gregory Prize—best book on Africa published in Canada),
Heterosexual Africa?: The History of an Idea from the Age of Exploration
to the Age of AIDS (nominated for the 2009 best book from African
Studies Association, USA), and Sexuality and Social Justice in Africa
(nominated for the 2014 Joel Gregory Prize). Marc has lived on the con-
tinent off and on since the 1980s and has also taught at the University of
Zimbabwe, University of KwaZulu-Natal, and University of Basel.
ix
x NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Evelyn Fanneron obtained her B.A. in International Studies from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she used her studies
as an opportunity to focus on human rights in Africa and Latin America.
Fanneron subsequently studied law at Boston College Law School.
There she continued to pursue her interest in international matters and
human rights from a legal perspective and, in addition to her course
load on point, interned in the Prosecutor’s Office of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. While at Boston College
Law School, Fanneron also served as Staff Writer and then Articles
Editor of the Boston College Law Review. Currently, Fanneron is a
Litigation Associate at White & Case, LLP, in the firm’s New York office.
Mary Galvin joined the Department of Anthropology and Development
Studies at the University of Johannesburg as an Associate Professor in
2014. She has worked in South Africa as a researcher, development prac-
titioner, and social justice activist since 1992, particularly on the water
and sanitation issues. She established and directed two non-profit organ-
izations, a membership based rural development forum and an action
research and policy NGO focusing on water and sanitation, and coordi-
nated a national multi-stakeholder dialogue on achieving universal access
to water (www.waterdialogues.org/south-africa). Her research focuses
on socio-economic rights, particularly the right to water and sanitation;
civil society and governance; and climate justice and community-based
climate change adaptation. Two of her recent articles are “Talking shit:
is Community-Led Total Sanitation a radical and revolutionary approach
to sanitation?” and “Participating in Urban Myths about Women’s Rural
Water Struggles.” She holds an M.A. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in
political science from the University of California, Berkeley.
David Hallowes is a researcher with groundWork, an environmental
justice organization. Each year, he writes for The groundWork Report
which looks at the state of environmental justice in relation to a par-
ticular theme. The latest reports have been on the Destruction of the
Highveld by digging coal and burning it in power stations, petrochem-
ical plants and mineral smelters. He is also the author of Toxic Futures:
South Africa in the Crises of Energy, Environment and Capital (UKZN
Press, 2011).
Willy Mutunga is Kenya’s former Chief Justice and President of the
Supreme Court (2011–2016). He obtained a Ph.D. in jurisprudence