The Land Is Ours: South Africa’s First Black Lawyers and the Birth of Constitutionalism by Ngcukaitobi, Tembeka - 2018-06-21

Paperback. Very Good.

Penguin Random House South Africa, 2018. paperback. Very Good. 6x1x9. reprint. light shelf wear on the wraps. a little marked. al pages are intact and presentable. [SK]. Our orders are shipped using tracked courier delivery services.

(Cape Town: Penguin, 2018) 9781776092857. 233 x 154 mm; laminated pictorial wrappers; pp. (vi) + 312; plates. Fine condition. "An enthralling account of the first black lawyers and their battles to find a just, liberal order for all people in South Africa. I cannot remember any book in recent times that broadened my understanding of white-black relations so comprehensively and incisively." - Hermann Giliomee .

ISBN 9781776092857
Publisher: Penguin 2018
Soft cover
312 pages
The Land Is Ours tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, who operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an age of aggressive colonial expansion, land dispossession and forced labour, these men believed in a constitutional system that respected individual rights and freedoms, and they used the law as an instrument against injustice.
The book follows the lives, ideas and careers of Henry Sylvester Williams, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Ngcubu Poswayo and George Montsioa, who were all members of the ANC. It analyses the legal cases they took on, explores how they reconciled the law with the political upheavals of the day, and considers how they sustained their fidelity to the law when legal victories were undermined by politics.
The Land Is Ours shows that these lawyers developed the concept of a Bill of Rights, which is now an international norm. The book is particularly… Read More