If the relationship between law and social change is unclear, there is nevertheless today a wide consensus that society should be regulated by law and that public power should be exercised in accordance with its due process. There is also a widely shared belief in the instrumental potential of law to bring about social change. After providing some general theoretical perspectives on the social role of law in capitalist and socialist societies, the author examines the relationship between Africa’s legal systems and the specific economic and political conditions of African States. Decolonization ushered in constitutions based on notions of the constitutionalist State, underpinned by the primacy of the law. What has emerged in Africa since is a patrimonial State, with highly personalized authority. Some of the transformation has been secured through formal amendments of the law, but a great deal of it has been achieved through the manipulation, trivialization and disregard of the law. What then is the role of law in the strategies for transition? The appropriateness or the availability of law as a technique of change may in practice depend on several factors, such as the mode of transfer of power, or the aim of the transitional regime. In South Africa, law has been a significant instrument in social and economic changes. A key challenge of liberation is to replace the technical and oppressive legality of apartheid with the humanistic and egalitarian legality of a free, nonracial society.
