L'évolution de la justice traditionnelle dans l'Afrique francophone

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe legal dualism provoked by the introduction of French law into Africa during the colonial period is presently one of the causes of the paralysis of institutional reforms in many countries which got their independence in 1960. The French because of their assimilationist and ethnocentric intervention refused to see any logic in pre-colonial systems. As far as indigenous justice is concerned traditional jurisdictions were combined with a system largely controlled by metropolitan institutions. Since then two trends have been opposed to each other. On one hand the Senegalese trend is based on the institutional transformation of aboriginal justice, on the other hand in the Congolese trend a great part is given to the internal adjustment of traditional structures to modernity. After fifteen years of legislative and jurisprudential experiences, it has become therefore a necessity to encourage a transformation of the existing organization in order to assure the citizen equality before the law, the “Afri...