The local courts of Zambia are the successors to the native courts which the British set up in Northern Rhodesia to administer justice to Africans. Cases brought before these courts are decided in accordance with the applicable customary law. The vast majority of local courts are situated in the rural areas, and their position in the urban areas has always been slightly anomalous. Indeed, the customary law applied in the urban local courts in the 1970s and 1980s has changed both in form and in content from what it was thirty years ago and from what it is in the rural areas today. In particular, the urban local courts have acquired much greater control over the formation and dissolution of customary marriages. Moreover, their authority to issue divorce certificates has enabled them not only to define the conditions under which a customary marriage may be dissolved, but it has given them the opportunity to extend their jurisdiction over issues of custody, maintenance and property adjustment that would formerly have rarely been brought before them. While the courts, in determining these issues, claim to be applying ‘customary law’ and state, for example, that in cases of conflict the customary law of the wife shall apply, the case records suggest that the courts are prepared to take into account a wide variety of factors in reaching their decisions. In fact, at the local court level it is possible to identify the evolution of an African common law applicable to all urban Africans regardless of their ethnic origin. Notes, ref.
