Announcement: Tenth Stellenbosch Annual Seminar on Constitutionalism (SASCA 2023)
/The Tenth Stellenbosch Annual Seminar on Constitutionalism in Africa (SASCA 2023) will take place in Stellenbosch (South Africa) from Wednesday 20 to Friday 22 September 2023.
ORGANISERS
SASCA 2023 is jointly organised by the Stellenbosch Institute for
Advanced Study (STIAS) and;
● The Institute for International and Comparative Law in Africa (ICLA) of the Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria;
● The University of the Western Cape Research Chair in Constitutional Design for Divided Societies;
● The South African Research Chair in Multilevel Government, Law and Development (SARChI) at the Dullah Omar Institute, University of the Western Cape; and
● The Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Rule of law Programme Sub- Saharan Africa (Anglophone Countries), based in Nairobi.
THEME
The theme for SASCA 2023 is “Ethnicity and Constitutionalism in Africa”.
CONTENTS
The emergence of ethnicity as a potent force in politics in Africa is as old as the postcolonial state. African leaders were confronted with the complex problem of maintaining the territorial integrity of the newly independent but deeply divided states they inherited from the
departing colonial powers. They thought recognizing ethnic diversity that defines the basic feature of their society would give rise to divisive politics, instability and disintegration. The attempts to make ethnicity a non-issue through constitutions that ignore or suppress diversity have not been able to produce the desired results of political stability and economic development. In the recent past three decades, the reality of disgruntled ethnic groups and political violence, spilling over, in many cases, into intractable armed conflicts, has forced countries to adopt new constitutions in order to manage their divided societies. These constitutions have introduced different mechanisms with the view to accommodate ethnic diversity and dampen communal tensions. Other countries are either unwilling or do not appreciate the relevance and propriety of using constitutions to recognise distinct identities.
INTRODUCTION
This seminar will try to breathe life into an aspect of ethnic diversity management that is largely neglected in the literature: constitutional design. It does so by bringing together leading experts on constitutional design and ethnicity to examine the relevance and use of constitutions to deal with the challenges of ethnic diversity in African states. Through detailed comparative and country case studies, it interrogates the extent to which the tensions in ethnically divided societies can be managed, reduced or exacerbated by a country’s constitution.
The main sub-themes that will be examined during the seminar include
the following:
● Ethnicity, colonialism and nation-building in Africa: The historical context and its evolution
● Ethnicity, constitutionalism and constitutional design
● Case studies
● Constitutional accommodation of ethnicity and its impact on “the others”
● African Union’s and Regional Economic Communities’ role in dealing with challenges of ethnic diversity.
PROCEDURES
The call for papers opened in December 2022, and targeted African legal scholars, judges and legal practitioners from Africa as well as international scholars who have researched and published on the various issues raised in the call for papers. In the first of the two-stage selection process, abstracts were selected and the authors were invited to submit draft papers. In the second round of the process the first drafts were reviewed and an invitation to submit revised papers was extended to some of those whose first drafts was approved by the organising committee.
EXPECTED OUTCOMES
The participants during this seminar will examine the complex issues that have arisen since the recent wave of reforms designed to counter these problems and see how best these can be addressed. All the papers presented during the seminar will be peer reviewed for publication in the eight volume of the Stellenbosch Handbooks in African Constitutional