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
• Author: Mosaka, T.

The Black Flame (part one):

Snyman’s Criminal Law

TSHEPO MOSAKA*

ABSTRACT

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

scholarly immort ality. It has been re vised by Hoctor, but Snyman’s name

lives on. This is consist ent with the argument made i n Part one of the

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

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

Part one begins by cla rifying why th is review is conducted in th is way.

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

the two dominant t raditions of South A frican crim inal law, following the

work of Gardiner and Lans down and De Wet and Swanepoel. Thirdly, the

paper concludes by developing the argument that Sout h African cr iminal

law remains in a per petual north bound-gaze towards Europe and away

from Africa. T his theme is developed fur ther in Part s two and three of thi s

review.

1 Introduction

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

Bois wrote a 1200-word manuscript compri sing a trilogy of novels,

The Ordeal of Mansart (19 57 ), Mansart Builds a S chool (1959) and

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

Black Flame, after which this review article is entitled, bega n 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’ i s

used by du Bois to ‘turn an apocaly ptic gure of annihi lation’ into

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

de li ve r an c e’. 3 Mansart’s birt h in the rst novel is representative of hope

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

dead by American white nationalis ts while attempting to protect the

door of the house in which Mansar t 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 ‘T he ordeal of Mansa rt’ in HL Gate s Jr (ed) The Black Flame Trilog y

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

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

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© 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 recount s: ‘I am

that Black Flame in which my grandmot her 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 simila r 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 ex istence: Criminal

justice institutions are placed under severe pressu re 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 t hat a woman is

killed every thre e hours.8 It remains the case annua lly (2019/2020) in

South Africa th at 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 t he world are in Nubian Africa,10 and

South Africa is ra nked 70th out of 180 countries.11 Further more, South

African cri minal law remains f undamentally nort hbound-gazing12

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

On the other hand, the inst itutional (political) legitimacy of t he South

African cri minal 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 Nunl all ‘Gender-base d 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 crim inalisation 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 ‘T he interrelation ship between gender- based violence

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

9 South Afr ican Police Serv ice Crime Statisti cs: Crime Situatio n in the Republic of

South Africa, Twelve Month s (April to March 2019-20) (2020), available at http s://

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

on 25 February 2021. The tot al number of incident s of murder and rape repor ted

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

10 Controversially a lso referred to as ‘Sub -Saharan’ or ‘Tropica l’ Africa, see M de

Haldevang ‘Why do we sti ll use the term “sub -Saharan A frica”?’, Quartz Afr ica,

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

subsaharan-af rica/, accessed on 1 March 2019.

11 Transparency In ternational Corr uption Perceptions Index (2019), available at

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

12 This phras ed is borrowed from MB R amose ‘“African Renai ssance”: A northbound

gaze’ in PH Coetzee & A PJ Roux (eds) The African Philosop hy Reader 2ed (2003)

600.

The Black Flame (part one): Snyman’s Criminal Law 215

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