Legal History

In the article below, journalist Lucille Davie unpacks the history and significance of the landmark Magistrates' Courts in Johannesburg. The article was first published on the City of Joburg's website on 7 June 2007. Click here to view more of Davie's writing.

Twenty years ago this year two car bombs went off outside the Magistrates’ Courts in downtown Joburg. Three policemen died, and 15 were injured.
 
On 20 May, 1987 a decoy blast took place, and policemen from the then John Vorster Square (now the Central Police Station), six or seven blocks away, rushed to the scene. The second, more powerful blast killed three of those policemen.
 
These were the 11th and 12th bomb blasts in Johannesburg that year. Some of the others that occurred in the city were at the Sanlam Centre in Eloff Street, Sandton, the Civic Centre, Cosatu House and the Carlton Centre.

Carlton Centre (The Heritage Portal)

Twenty-four-year-old Hein Grosskopf, a member of the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe, was responsible for planting the bombs. He also placed bombs outside the Krugersdorp Magistrates’ Courts and the Witwatersrand Command in Quartz Street. Two military personnel died in the Krugersdorp blast.
 
Bomb blasts through the 1980s escalated until by...

Ordinances of the Transvaal 1903, 1904 and Statutes of the Transvaal 1907. Whoever wants to look at old, dry, dusty, obsolete law books? Law books date, they take up space on shelves and laws are repealed. Legal language is precise and unemotional. The Transvaal ceased to exist in 1994 and today a completely different provincial government structure has replaced the pre 1994 arrangement of four all white driven apartheid provinces and the 10 bantustans.

But step back in time and old law books acquire an antiquarian and historical interest and become yet another prism through which we can attempt to understand the past. Laws, ordinances and statutes are  building blocks of an orderly society. They are an expression of the norms and values of a society at a particular point in time. Laws embody the canons of justice. They give authority to the executive arm of government in matters large and small. A society without law shifts into an anarchic state. Laws enable government to implement policies, ideologies and principles. Law gives expression to changed circumstances in societies.

It is the bread and butter of lawyers to read law books but the layman can broaden his reach and grasp by also trying  to read a law book or two.

I recently dropped in on a sale of a deceased private collection of Africana and history books. Buying three old law books dating back to the early 20th century was not my first choice as I gathered up a miscellaneous but appealing selection of books. At R40 for a hard cover here was an opportunity not to be missed. Then...