Professor Anthony Diala has been a social justice advocate since he began his academic journey, and is now determined to ensure that everyone under his tutelage becomes an agent for change. On Monday, 22 September, he will deliver his inaugural lecture at the University of the Western Cape (UWC). 

The eldest of nine children, Prof Diala's father was a journalist who lost his job, returned to the village to become a farmer, and retired as a director in the civil service. His mother was the head teacher at their village primary school. He jokingly refers to himself as the best of both of them, a social justice teacher.

Raised on a farm near Owerri in Imo State, Nigeria, he said life wasn’t easy in the village: “Forget about running water. We had to go about two kilometres daily to the village stream to fetch water in a can, which you carry on your head all the way back home. Electricity was epileptic. You see it maybe once in two weeks, and if something happened to the village transformer, then you could go without electricity for upwards of eight months.”

Prof Diala described himself as a trailblazing late bloomer: “I was 20 years old when I started university...which is comparatively old, as the students I teach today graduate at that age. I attended Enugu State University in Nigeria. I was a student when the military regime was in place in the late 90s, so we experienced political repression as university undergraduates. We were young idealists when Nigeria transitioned to democracy after the military interruptions. It was a turbulent period, very topsy-turvy, and civil society was very active in empowerment during the resistance to military rule. In law school after graduating from the University, I felt that I could play a role, specifically, free legal defence of indigent people, especially accused persons.”

Prof Diala completed his Master of Laws degree at the University of Pretoria in 2007, and his early career led him to criminal justice: “I completed an internship in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. I spent seven months in Arusha, and after that internship, I returned to Nigeria, where I worked briefly with a law firm for about four months as an advocate. But I was basically marking time - waiting to return to the international arena, and so I did with another internship at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2009.”

He described his time at the ICC as two extremes, rewarding and mentally anguishing. He worked on the case of Congolese rebel leader Thomas Lubanga. This was a landmark case, as it was the first time the ICC convicted a military leader and had a particular focus on the use of child soldiers. “I had single-handedly summarised 19 witnesses that testified in the Thomas Lubanga case. Actually, I introduced witness summaries in the prosecution division at the ICC. It was not standard practice until then. After my internship, I was moved to video and do documentary analyses in the Darfur Situation.”

But the exposure to graphic atrocities took its toll on Prof Diala. “I worked as an evidence reviewer, and I had to review very violent videos of militias and the atrocities they committed. For an idealistic young man who thought he could change the world, having to watch videos of babies being ripped out of their mothers' wombs and other atrocities was rather traumatic.”

With counselling and therapy not utilised effectively, Prof Diala turned to academia on a new mission - to effectively use the law as a tool for social justice.

Prof Anthony Diala will deliver his inaugural lecture titled, The Foundational Values of Indigenous Laws as the Framework for African Common Laws.

He completed his PhD at the University of Cape Town, and in August 2018, he joined UWC as a senior lecturer. Prof Diala is passionate about the law and enabling young legal practitioners to be agents of change.  He said: “I teach the law as a living thing, and I try to teach in such a way that I bring my students out from the classroom mentally and insert them into society. So, I teach them to apply the law as a transformative tool for social change. This is very important. But many of them end up choosing to work where they can earn a lot of money, and very few want to work in legal aid, and for social justice, so to speak. Generally, they don't want to choose private law courses.  They prefer commercial law. They want to make money by working for big law firms.” 

The topic of his inaugural lecture, The Foundational Values of Indigenous Laws asThe Framework for African Common Laws, is the culmination of Prof Diala’s 15 years in academia. 

“I often ask people: What is the problem with African customary laws? And they can rarely give me a satisfactory answer. I pose this question in conferences. I pose it in debates, and I even ask people in media interviews. And I can tell you what the problem is…there is a disconnection between the origins of indigenous African laws and our modern individualistic conditions. Because the laws that we're applying, the so-called statutory laws (English Common Law and Roman-Dutch Law) are colonially imposed European laws from societies that had witnessed the Second Industrial Revolution, they are unsuited to indigenous African norms that emerged in agrarian societies.”

The lecture is based on empirical work that Prof Diala and his colleagues conducted in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape between 2022 and 2024, after their previous field research in Nigeria and Somaliland. He said: “When you discover the core values behind customary laws and contrast them with modern conditions, you realise the need to drop some of these customs because they are no longer suited to modern conditions.”

Drawing from multi-country field research, he argues that the foundational values of indigenous laws reveal conflict of law dynamics involving traditional and modern lifestyles. Since these values depict collective beliefs about (in)appropriate conduct, they illuminate the agrarian origins of indigenous laws, especially their patriarchal nature in contemporary modernity. Properly ascertained, he believes these values could form the groundwork for the emergence of a common law in South Africa and beyond.

Prof Diala has taught in Nigeria, Italy and Germany. He is a champion of social justice who is leveraging the lecture hall and his international contacts to groom a new generation of scholars to become agents of positive change in an era of rapid globalisation.

He completed his PhD at the University of Cape Town, and in August 2018, he joined UWC as a senior lecturer. Prof Diala is passionate about the law and enabling young legal practitioners to be agents of change.  He said: “I teach the law as a living thing, and I try to teach in such a way that I bring my students out from the classroom mentally and insert them into society. So, I teach them to apply the law as a transformative tool for social change. This is very important. But many of them end up choosing to work where they can earn a lot of money, and very few want to work in legal aid, and for social justice, so to speak. Generally, they don't want to choose private law courses.  They prefer commercial law. They want to make money by working for big law firms.” 

The topic of his inaugural lecture, The Foundational Values of Indigenous Laws as

The Framework for African Common Laws, is the culmination of Prof Diala’s 15 years in academia. 

“I often ask people: What is the problem with African customary laws? And they can rarely give me a satisfactory answer. I pose this question in conferences. I pose it in debates, and I even ask people in media interviews. And I can tell you what the problem is…there is a disconnection between the origins of indigenous African laws and our modern individualistic conditions. Because the laws that we're applying, the so-called statutory laws (English Common Law and Roman-Dutch Law) are colonially imposed European laws from societies that had witnessed the Second Industrial Revolution, they are unsuited to indigenous African norms that emerged in agrarian societies.”

The lecture is based on empirical work that Prof Diala and his colleagues conducted in Limpopo and the Eastern Cape between 2022 and 2024, after their previous field research in Nigeria and Somaliland. He said: “When you discover the core values behind customary laws and contrast them with modern conditions, you realise the need to drop some of these customs because they are no longer suited to modern conditions.”

Drawing from multi-country field research, he argues that the foundational values of indigenous laws reveal conflict of law dynamics involving traditional and modern lifestyles. Since these values depict collective beliefs about (in)appropriate conduct, they illuminate the agrarian origins of indigenous laws, especially their patriarchal nature in contemporary modernity. Properly ascertained, he believes these values could form the groundwork for the emergence of a common law in South Africa and beyond.

Prof Diala has taught in Nigeria, Italy and Germany. He is a champion of social justice who is leveraging the lecture hall and his international contacts to groom a new generation of scholars to become agents of positive change in an era of rapid globalisation.