ee AO, awe. oyst Cente Kor wn ee K \ ‘THE DISCOURSE OF RIGHTS IN COLONTAL, SOUTH AFRICA: subjectivity, sovereignty, modernity John L. comarott 1992"2 DISCOURSE OF RIGHTS IN COLONIAL soUre arRIcA subjectivity, sovereignty, modernity John Comaratt "The Law is the greatest thing imaginable. "That's true because it’s absurd." srwithout) equality. att rig Carlos Fuentes, the canoaign! Tr. tRopuctrox Tt has becone connonplace to note the centrality of law in the colonization of the non-European world; connonplace to assert "its" role in the fashioning of new Eurocentric hegenonies, in the creation of co- jonial subjects, in the rise of various forms of resistance?--vide, 1a- Sely, Mann and Roberts’ excellent Lay in Colonial africa.? tn all this, the discourse of rights has been @ recurrent theme, albeit sonetines a submerged, secondary one. Historically-speaking, the sanner in vhich legal sensibilities and practices entered into colonizing processes, into their dranatic gestures and prosaic theaters, turns out to have been nore subtle, less audible, murkier, than is often suggested. But, no matter, the general point has been made. ad nauseam. ts there any- thing new to say? Anything more, other than confirmatory detail, to add? Perhaps the most coherent statenent of received wisdom on the role Of rights in colonial Southern and central Africa is to be found in Martin chanock’s consistently insightful writings on the invention of customary law (e.g. 1985, 1991). Treating property, after Senthan,* as the quintessential context in which rights are constituted, conjured with, and called into question--and, simultaneously, stressing "the