Endemic Disregard for the International Rule of Law in Africa?

An African attitude towards the protection of human rights has been labelled bluntly as ‘rooted in endemic disregard for the rule of law as such’1 so often that this intellectual cliché more and more often effectively discourages attempts to oppose or disprove such a statement. However, scientific honesty requires a special prudence in dealing with a commonplace such as that. Hence, this paper offers a brief survey, essentially neither to definitely confirm nor to falsify the abovementioned thesis but to tackle a selected problem related thereto. Instead of a common high-altitude and high-speed study based on a sketchy and general observations regarding numerous African legal instruments and accompanied practice, this paper presents an analysis of a selected phenomenon (one which provoked caustic comment) to distil more general observations.