Date: 31 May 2023
Time: 13:00 - 14:00 SAST

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Abstract/Concept Note

Across most of Africa and many other jurisdictions the teaching of corporate law, business entities law or simply company law in law schools often opens with an esoteric visitation to the leather boots and shoes family business of Mr Aaron Salomon in 1896 England where the roots of corporate law were laid. The case was heralded as the greatest thing that ever happened to entrepreneurs who could now invest in business without carrying the risk through the creation of the legal fiction of corporate personality. It is this renowned persona, the limited liability company, which today presents the greatest challenge to sustainability and human rights. In 2023, the law is still saddled with 19 th century baggage, which is preventing progressive ideas of sustainability, accountability, corporate governance, and sustainable livelihoods from taking root. Despite the development of strong international and national human rights frameworks, engraved in treaties and constitutions and championed by an army of selfless civil society and scholars this edifice seems ineffective to reign in on the excesses of corporations. Corporations seek profits at the detriment of communities, the environment and whole countries. This is most illustrated in the extractives industry.

This study hypothesises that insufficient pressure has been put from the external business and human rights angle, and thus we need to shift towards internally disrupting and reimagining corporate (internal or primary) law itself. This includes specialised fields of regulation such as banking law and regulation that not only create, but also define the functions, rights, and entitlements of these legal personas. How about embedding human rights, corporate social, and environmental (sustainability) responsibility in the constitutive laws? I argue that without a sustained effort to reinvent the wheel by revolutionising/transforming corporate and banking laws, little impact is going to be felt by corporations as far as human rights are concerned in the extractive industries. This will be explored in the space of the extractive industries in Southern Africa.
 

Speaker: 

Tumai Murombo PhD (Wits), LLM Human Rights Law (UCT), LLM Environmental Law (Pace University, New York), LLB (Hons) (University of Zimbabwe) is a Professor of Law at Wits University, and former Director of the Mandela Institute. He is admitted to practice law in Zimbabwe. He is an expert in environmental law, energy and climate change, sustainability, extractives and the environment, water law and governance, among others. As an NRF rated researcher, he has researched, advised governments and civil society organizations on these areas. Prof Murombo co- founded and is board chair of the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Association (ZELA). He sits on the Editorial Board of the Journal of African Law and is a member of the Water Tribunal (South Africa), the Environmental Law Association (South Africa), the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law, its Environmental Law Academy and the Working Group on Climate Change and Energy.