Jump to navigation

Vol 42 No 3

Published 9th February 2001


Austin Amissah

We are saddened to announce the death of Justice Austin Amissah, a reader, critic and friend of Africa Confidential.

An eminent jurist, academic and author, Justice Amissah's career spanned Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Europe. Born in Ghana in 1930, Justice Amissah became that country's Attorney General and served on Commissions and Enquiries across the Commonwealth. As President of Botswana's Court of Appeal, he made a landmark ruling in favour of Unity Dow's right to confer nationality on her children. He found that the Botswana constitution's guarantee of equal treatment of men and women overrode an immigration regulation stipulating that nationality rights could be conferred only by a man.

A former colleague of Amissah's on the Botswana appeal bench, better known as Nelson Mandela's lawyer, George Bizos, described Amissah as "…a zealous guardian of judicial independence; a patient, helpful and understanding colleague; he avoided prejudgment of any cause and strove to reach a just decision in every case after giving counsel on both sides and his brethren on the bench every opportunity to persuade him what was the right thing to do".



Related Articles

A whale's tale

Tokyo has been caught trying to bribe African countries to gain support in its quest to overturn an international ban on commercial whaling

National pride comes before a fall. Reports that Tokyo has routinely bribed at least six African countries to vote in support of its whaling policy have embarrassed the Japanese government. This...


Sarko's team

New Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has won his battle to keep development policy in his Ministry, rather than in the new Immigration Ministry under the right-wing Brice Hortefeux,...


Experts argue about Africa's prospects

The IMF and the AfDB differ sharply on the severity of the global recession's effects on Africa and the measures needed to ameliorate them

The world's financial experts and institutions disagree on how seriously the global financial crash has affected developing economies or how quickly they may recover. In Africa, the International...


No more picking winners

'No special favours' for individual countries but, instead, 'broad engagement' with Africa was the message from Robert Godec, the United States African Affairs Acting Assistant Secretary, ahead of...


Digging a black hole

As the oil price soars, nuclear power is back in fashion and the uranium to fuel it booms, the speculators get to work

The quoted price for uranium was recently just US$8 per pound. Now it is above US$60. David Miller, a geologist and market analyst, reckons that could double until...