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Law in Context
Professor Chuma Himonga
Professor Chuma Himonga completed an LLB at the University of Zambia, an LLM at King’s College London, and a PhD
at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is Professor of Law at the University of Cape Town and
an NRF-rated researcher. She has served as a former deputy dean of undergraduate and postgraduate studies at UCT,
an Akademische Rätin auf Zeit at the University of Bayreuth, Germany (1988–1994), and as a lecturer at the University of
Zambia (1978–1988). She has collaborated in three major international and regional academic research projects in Europe
and Africa, and is a former member of the South African Law Reform Commission Project Committee on Customary Law.
A true and more realistic determination of the
relationship between customary law and other
components of Africa’s legal pluralistic landscape,
including human rights and democratic governance,
also depends on how well the former is researched
and understood as a system of living law. These
underscore the significance of Professor Himonga’s
scholarly undertakings and the direction of the
research at her Chair.
Researcher Profile
Professor Himonga convenes public and postgraduate
seminars in All Africa House (where she serves as the
warden), and manages a fellowship programme for
academics from other African universities, funded
by UCT. She has served on a number of boards of
trustees, including the International Association of
Law Schools Board from 2005 to 2010.
Professor Himonga’s current preoccupation as holder
of the South African Research Chair in Customary Law
is refocusing research in customary law from theoretical
studies to “grounded” empirically based investigations
of the actual workings of customary law. This approach
reflects the changed conceptualisation of customary law
as living customary law in legal theoretical discourses.
It is furthermore consistent with the normative frame
of living customary law confirmed as the legitimate
sources of law by the South African Constitution and
Constitutional Court, and increasingly by other African
legal systems.
The ground-breaking nature of the direction of the South
African Research Chair in Customary Law’s research
is to be viewed against the dearth of research on the
African continent that takes the empirical investigation
of customary law as a normative system seriously. While
volumes of important literature have been published
on customary law, little is based on the actual practices
of the people who are subject to customary law, and
therefore of little relevance to the lives of this legal
system’s adherents and its implementation by the state.
A true and more realistic
determination of the relationship
between customary law and other
components of Africa’s legal
pluralistic landscape depends on
how well the former is researched
and understood as a system of
living law.