Bowmans and Penguin Random House invite you to the launch of The Land is Ours by advocate Tembeka Ngcukaitobi.

Please RSVP to events_jhb@bowmanslaw.com by 26 April 2018.

Event details

Date: 3 May 2018
Time: 17:30–20:30
Venue: Bowmans, 11 Alice Lane, Sandton
Facebook event

About the book

South Africa’s first black lawyers and the birth of constitutionalism.

The Land is Ours tells the story of South Africa’s first black lawyers, who operated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In an age of aggressive colonial expansion, land dispossession and forced labour, these men believed in a constitutional system that respected individual rights and freedoms, and they used the law as an instrument against injustice.

The book follows the lives, ideas and careers of Henry Sylvester Williams, Alfred Mangena, Richard Msimang, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, Ngcubu Poswayo and George Montsioa, who were all members of the ANC. It analyses the legal cases they took on, explores how they reconciled the law with the political upheavals of the day, and considers how they sustained their fidelity to the law when legal victories were undermined by politics.

The Land is Ours shows that these lawyers developed the concept of a Bill of Rights, which is now an international norm. The book is particularly relevant in light of current calls to scrap the Constitution and its protections of individual rights: it clearly demonstrates that, from the beginning, the struggle for freedom was based on the idea of the rule of law.

Categories Non-fiction South Africa South African Current Affairs

Tags Book events Book launches Bowmans Johannesburg Penguin Random House SA Tembeka Ngcukaitobi The Land is Ours