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UCT RESEARCH REPORT 2012
Inspiring the
Next Generation Of
Scholars
Scholarship at the Centre for Law and Society is always
orientated outward to what it sees as the key challenges
facing South Africa today, while from within its teaching and
supervision programme develops a new generation of engaged
scholars and activists.
T
he Centre for Law and Society (CLS) has consolidated and expanded its flagship
programmes – the Law, Race and Gender Research Unit (LRG), and the Rural
Women’s Action Research Project (RWAR) – led by Dr Aninka Claassens, director of
RWAR; and Associate Professor Dee Smythe, director of the CLS.
For two decades LRG has carried out in-depth research, and has trained and mentored
more than a thousand judicial decision-makers on a range of social issues, even as it has
actively sought to support the transformation of the justice system.
RWAR, too, has adopted a distinctive methodology: combining regular rural, community-
based consultations with empirical research, to establish the content of living customary
law which is in contradistinction to the rule-bound versions of customary law entrenched
by new, conservative laws.
The work of the Centre for Law and Society has resulted in high quality research outputs
such as the Acta Juridica on Marriage, Land and Custom (forthcoming, 2013), edited
by Claassens and Smythe. The CLS has also been closely involved with law reform,
constitutional litigation and community organising, which has led to the establishment in
2012 of the Alliance for Rural Democracy.
The CLS has been closely involved with law reform, constitutional
litigation and community organising, which has led to the
establishment in 2012 of the Alliance for Rural Democracy.
Dr Aninka Claassens