Confronting Apartheid: A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine

In: Handmaker , J 2020 , ' Confronting Apartheid: A Personal History of South Africa, Namibia and Palestine ' , South African Journal on Human Rights , vol. 36 , pp. 275-279 . https://doi.org/10.1080/02587203.2020.1868098

Abstract

This book by Professor John Dugard is both an autobiography as well as a critical legal history from a well-placed insider. As I have read it, the book's first goal is to explain apartheid as an oppressive and illegitimate system of laws – what I would regard as lawfare – and their impact on society, whereas the second goal is to highlight civic, government and international responses to this, drawing on case studies from Namibia, South Africa and Palestine, or what I would regard as various forms of legal mobilisation. Each case study detailed in the book is preceded by a brief history, followed by Dugard's extensive observations, and direct involvement, in each of these countries, as a scholar and as a legal practitioner in South Africa and within the United Nations system.