The Black Flame (part one): Snyman’s Criminal Law

• Pages: 214-230
• Published date: 17 November 2021
• Date: 17 November 2021
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/SACJ/v34/i2a3
• Citation: (2021) 34 SACJ 214
• Author: Mosaka, T.

The Black Flame (part one):

Snyman’s Criminal Law

TSHEPO MOSAKA*

ABSTRACT

The latest edition of Snyman’s Criminal Law has reached the status of

scholarly immortality. It has been revised by Hoctor, but Snyman’s name

lives on. This is consistent with the argument made in Part one of the

review of this book. This is a review conducted thr ough a trilogy of papers,

analogous to WEB du Bois’s trilogy of novels entitled the Black Flame.

Part one begins by clarifying why this review is conducted in this way.

The paper then proceeds to contex tualise Snyman’s Criminal Law along side

the two dominant traditions of South African criminal law, following the

work of Gardiner and Lansdown and De Wet and Swanepoel. Thirdly, the

paper concludes by developing the argument that South African criminal

law remains in a perpetual northbound-gaze towards Europe and away

from Africa. This theme is developed further in Parts two and three of this

review.

1 Introduction

In the short space of time between May 1949 and 1955 WEB du

Bois wrote a 1200-word manuscript comprising a trilogy of novels,

The Ordeal of Mansart (1957), Mansart Builds a School (1959) and

Worlds of Colour (1961).1 The work on this trilogy, entitled the

Black Flame, after which this review article is entitled, began when

duBois was 81, and he died about two years after the publication of

the last book.2 According to Edwards, the trope of a ‘Black Flame’ is

used by du Bois to ‘turn an apocalyptic gure of annihilation’ into

‘a more conventional gure for human progress, or messianic gure of

deliverance’.3 Mansart’s birt h in the rst novel is representative of hope

and triumph against struggle. Mansart’s father, Tom Mansart, was shot

dead by American white nationalists while attempting to protect the

door of the house in which Mansart was born.4 Mansart’s grandmother

* LLB (Wits) LLM (UC T) PhD (Nottingham), Lectur er in Law, University of Cape Town.

1 BH Edwards ‘Int roduction’ in HL Gates Jr (ed) The Black Flame Trilog y (Book One):

The Ordeal of Mans art (2007) xxv at xxv.

2 Ibid. A histor ian named Herbert Aptheker made a rrangements for the publication of

these novels in a left-wing jou rnal called ‘Masses and Main stream’.

3 Ibid xxix.

4 WEB du Bois ‘The ordeal of Mansart’ in HL Gates Jr (ed) The Black Flame Trilogy

(Book One): The Ordeal of Man sart (2007) 1 at 44–6.

https://doi.org/10.47348/SACJ/v34/i2a3

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(2021) 34 SACJ 214

© Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd

anointed the baby’s forehead with his father’s blood and rushed to

Emmanuel Church (Atlanta, Georgia) where she would shout ‘Behold

the Black Flame!’5 At the tail-end of the book, Mansart recounts: ‘I am

that Black Flame in which my grandmother believed and on whose

bloodstained body she swore. I am the Black Flame, but I burn for

cleaning, not destroying. Therefore, I burn slow.’6 The latest edition of

Snyman’s Criminal Law (2020) represents a similar Du Boisian ‘Black

Flame’ in many ways.

Shannon Hoctor’s latest revision of Snyman’s Criminal Law is

published in a comparably tragic time of human existence: Criminal

justice institutions are placed under severe pressure by the social

mayhem arising from the COVID-19 pandemic7 and South Africa

arguably has one of the highest gender-based violence and femicide

rates in the world, including the shocking statistic that a woman is

killed every three hours.8 It remains the case annually (2019/2020) in

South Africa that about 58 murders occur per day, yet only about 18%

of these are prosecuted, and about 115 daily incidents of rape occur,

yet only about 12% of these are prosecuted.9 More than half of 30 of

the most corrupt countries in the world are in Nubian Africa,10 and

South Africa is ranked 70th out of 180 countries.11 Furthermore, South

African criminal law remains fundamentally northbound-gazing12

towards Europe, as will be shown later in this t rilogy of review articles.

On the other hand, the institutional (political) legitimacy of the South

African criminal process is endangered by the untenable situation of

approximately 42% of South African s litigating in the alternate universe

5 du Bois op cit (n4) at 46.

6 du Bois op cit (n4) at 228.

7 P Gutara & R Nunlall ‘Gender-based violence amid the COVID-19 pandemic:

Acritical reection on t he global response’ (2020) 33 Acta Criminol 108; EC Lubaa le

‘COVID-19-related criminalisation in S outh Africa’ (2020) 33 SACJ 684.

8 J Dlamini ‘G ender-based violence, twin pa ndemic to COVID-19’ (2020) 47 Crit Sociol

583 at 588; CJ Onyejekwe ‘The interrelationship between gender-based violence

and HIV/AIDS in South Africa’ (2004) 6 J Inter nat Women’s Studies 34.

9 South African Police Service Crime Statistics: Crime Situation in the Republic of

South Africa, Twelve Months(April to March 2019-20) (2020), available at https://

www.saps.gov.za/services/ april_to_march_2019_20_presentation.pdf, accessed

on 25 February 2021. The total number of incidents of murder and rape reported

during the 2019/2020 year of repor ting is 21,325 and 42,289, respectively.

10Controversially also referred to as ‘Sub-Saharan’ or ‘Tropical’ Africa, see M de

Haldevang ‘Why do we still use the term “sub-Saharan Africa”?’, Quartz Africa,

1 September 2016, available at https://qz.com/africa/770350/why-do-we-still-say-

subsaharan-africa/, accessed on 1 March 2019.

11Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index (2019), available at

transparenc y.org /en/ cpi / 2019/index, accessed on 19 May 2020.

12This phrased is borrowed from MB Ramose ‘“African Renaissance”: A northbound

gaze’ in PH Coetzee & APJ Roux (eds) The African Philosophy Reader 2ed (2003)

600.

The Black Flame (part one): Snyman’s Criminal Law215

https://doi.org/10.47348/SACJ/v34/i2a3

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