A Rose is a Rose but is an 'Acacia' an 'Acacia'? Global Administrative Law in Action
| Jurisdiction | South Africa |
| Date | 15 August 2019 |
| Pages | 381-402 |
| Published date | 15 August 2019 |
| Author | Jan Glazewski |
| Citation | 2009 Acta Juridica 381 |
A Rose is a Rose but is an ‘Acacia’ an
‘Acacia’? Global Administrative
Law in Action
JAN GLAZEWSKI* & OLIVIA RUMBLE†
University of Cape Town
I INTRODUCTION
At the Plenary Session of the XVII International Botanical Congress
(‘IBC’), held in Vienna in 2005, the IBC operating under the auspices of
the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (‘IAPT’) decided to
re-assign the name Acacia, a tree species that occurs throughout the world,
to three segregate genera. According to the new classification suggested
by modern taxonomic evidence, the name Acacia henceforth would be
retained for the sub-genus of Acacia located in Australia where it would be
used mainly for Australian wattles.
The genus name Acacia, which is derived from the Greek akis meaning
sharp point, was first proposed in the mid-eighteenth century by a
botanist, Miller, based on a specimen of Acacia nilotica found in Egypt.
1
When Acacia was first named in the nineteenth century it was regarded as
monophyletic, meaning that the genus was regarded as originating from
one ‘mother type’. This is the equivalent of all of us regarding ourselves as
the descendants of just two parents. But recent advances in science and
technology have alerted taxonomists to the fact that Acacia is in fact
polyphyletic, meaning that as a group it does not originate from one
‘mother type’ but rather represents three separate lineages each with a
different ‘mother type’. This is akin to us realising that in fact some of us
are descended from another man and woman.
The reclassification of Acacia, described in more detail below, high-
lights the need to control the exercise of power in an international
context in cases where the legal issues do not fit neatly into historical
categories of national or international law. As the democratic credentials
of exercises of power at the transnational sphere are increasingly coming
into question, the need for a system of law that regulates such power is
becoming evident. The democratic deficit in the transnational sphere is
highlighted by the fact that in global administration there is no corre-
* Professor of Law in the Institute of Marine and Environmental Law, University of Cape
Town.
† Teaching and ResearchAssistant, Faculty of Law, University of Cape Town.
1
Botanists inform us that strictly speaking this should be Acacia scorpioides, which is a widely
accepted synonym for A. nilotica.
381
2009 Acta Juridica 381
© Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd
sponding link between those affected by, and those delegating, power. As
a result, those with the most leverage to demand and enforce accountabil-
ity may be those with the least interest in doing so.
2
II TAXONOMICALBACKGROUND
The father of plant taxonomy was the eighteenth century Swedish
botanist, Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778); the Linnaean system remains the
only working contemporary classification system that enjoys universal
scientific acceptance. It is a simple and practical system for organising
different organisms in an hierarchical system where each species and
higher category is given a unique and stable name which is regulated by a
complex code of rules and procedures. In simple terms the international
botanical community classifies plants according to a hierarchical system
that includes ranks such as order, family (including subfamily), genus and
species. The first species to which a new generic name is applied, known
as the ‘type species’, is significant in taxonomical practice as it provides the
cornerstone for the priority principle described in IV below.A scientific
generic name is attached to its type species (or ‘name-bearing species’),
which means that the particular generic name is applicable to the group
(genus) into which the type species is classified. Thus in the instant case
the family is Fabaceae (subfamily: Mimosoideae), and the genus is Acacia
which in turn comprises of approximately 1 300 species occurring world-
wide. Of these about 950 are to be found in Australia, 129 species inAfrica
(of which over 60 are indigenous to southern Africa) and a scattering in
Asia and some oceanic islands. The 129 African species are found
primarily in the drier parts of the continent from Egypt to South Africa
and from Senegal to Somalia.
3
Historically the genus Acacia comprised of three sub-genera. The first
subgenus, Acacia, contained about 170 species found mainly in Africa, the
Americas and Asia. Significantly this subgenus included the ‘name-
bearing’ species Acacia nilotica, following the first identification by the
botanist Miller. The second subgenus was Aculeiferum, comprising of
about 200 species also occurring mainly in the above three continents.
Thirdly, there was the subgenus known as Phyllodinea, the so-called
‘wattles’, a very large group of about 1000 species largely confined to
Australia.
Over time, increasingly sophisticated scientific studies, such as examin-
ing the DNA of these three subgroups, indicated that these species are less
closely related than previously thought. In the years immediately preced-
ing the Vienna Congress the international botanical community in
2
R Grant&ROKeohane ‘Accountability and abuses of power in world politics’ (2005) 1
American Political Science Review 1at1.
3
J Timberlake, C Fagg & R Barnes Field Guide to theAcacias of Zimbabwe (1999).
382 GLOBAL ADMINISTRATIVE LAW
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