Lawyering Against Apartheid: The Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, 1967-1994.

摘要

Between 1967 and 1994, the Southern Africa Project of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law connected lawyers in southern Africa and the United States to provide funding, resources, and solidarity. The Project, as it became known, existed as a subsidiary of the larger Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a Washington, DC,-based organization formed in 1963 for the purpose of furthering civil rights law in the United States. The Southern Africa Project served as a major funder in southern African political trials, funneling money from donors such as the Ford Foundation, Lutheran World Federation, South African Council of Churches, United Nations Trust Fund for South Africa, and World Council of Churches. Additionally, it provided expert witnesses and pathologists for death in detention cases. The Southern Africa Project provided an important link between solidarity workers in southern Africa and the United States as it transmitted information about detainees and political martyrs and assisted in public, US-based demonstrations against apartheid.;This dissertation argues that the Southern Africa Project's work was instrumental to political and legal change in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa and aims to situate it within the literature on freedom struggles on both sides of the Atlantic. While many organizations provided solidarity and funding, the Project played a unique role in connecting lawyers in southern Africa and the United States. Additionally, it assisted with constitutional research during negotiations on South Africa's future, and it helped facilitate and monitor elections in both Namibia and South Africa. The organization led US and international delegations participating in these elections and became one of the key non-South African actors during the transition.;Utilizing archival research, interviews, and media coverage of the organization, Lawyering Against Apartheid traces the organizational history of the Southern Africa Project, contextualizing its 1967 founding and discussing its major initiatives and successes. Research for this particular project has taken place in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It has utilized archival sources as well as interviews with Project workers, clients, and colleagues. This dissertation does not present---or even attempt to---a comprehensive view of the organization's many trials, but it does argue for its importance in a few key ones such as the Trial of the Namibians, the Steve Biko Inquest, Neil Aggett Inquest, State v. Ramaligela , and the Cassinga Detaines trial in Namibia. It follows a chronological structure, beginning in the 1960s and continuing through the 1990s and transition period. A brief conclusion attempts to place the Project into a larger historical context.;Lawyering Against Apartheid contributes to literature on social change generally, as well as to discussions of change in both southern Africa and the United States. It attempts to insert the Southern Africa Project into discussions about the larger Worldwide Anti-Apartheid Movement and to demonstrate the organization's role in important political trials. Through its discussion on law and social change, as well as its contribution to liberation struggle history, it hopes to provide a springboard for future scholars interested in any of these issues or in the organization and its cases.