Allyship: a moral imperative in the fight against injustice

AS A LAWYER, I was trained to view the law as a powerful mechanism to shape and structure society; an instrument to right wrongs, resolve uncertainty and impose order.

- NADEEM MAHOMED

In many contexts, this is partially true: the law can provide stability and predictability, particularly where the rule of law is firmly upheld. Yet even in such contexts, the stability law brings is often layered upon histories of exclusion and violence. Often, the legal system upholds the prevailing social order even when that order is unjust. Even where laws are progressive, we cannot assume they automatically yield justice. The transformation of moral aspirations into legal principles does not guarantee the realisation of justice in lived experience. The association between law and justice is persistent, but dangerously simplistic.

Take apartheid South Africa as a stark example: legality and systemic injustice were often synonymous. Racial segregation, economic disenfranchisement and the violent subjugation of black people were legal norms, sanctioned by the judiciary and entrenched through statute. The same system upheld deeply patriarchal structures. In the Cape Colony, sanctions for sexual crimes against women were not applied equally. Race, especially that of the victim, determined how or whether justice was pursued. Women of colour were denied the dignity and protection afforded to white women, who themselves were not adequately protected from patriarchal violence within marriage. In these systems, the law did not correct inequality, it reinforced it.

Misogyny, prejudice, exclusion