| Summary: | This thesis is a critical analysis of the incorporation and role of international human rights law in the municipal laws of Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. It adopts a comparative approach. This approach is predicated on the following similarities between the three countries. These countries have inherited the same Roman-Dutch common law from the erstwhile colonial Powers, they have entrenched Bills of Rights in their respective national Constitutions and there is an emerging judicial practice of invoking and relying upon international human rights law in interpreting national law. The areas examined are: the dominant theories on the relationship between international law and national law, colonial legal legacy, the reception and status of international human rights law in the pre-independence era, the domestic status of international law at independence and new departures, if any, from the colonial legacy, and the practice of each of these counties in relation to these theories in the post-independence legal order. As regards the latter, the study examines the extent to which Namibian monist theory adopted at independence and the monist-dualist inherited legacy of Botswana and Zimbabwe have been applied since independence in national law particularly by the judiciary in the enforcement of human rights law. A comparison is made between the countries in question in order to assess the relevance of classical monism and dualism in the domestic application of international human rights law. In particular, the thesis examines the extent to which the common theoretical approach inherited by these countries towards international law, customary and conventional, has been retained or departed from in the enforcement of national human rights law.
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