In memoriam: UP’s Centre for Human Rights pays tribute to the late Prof Michelo Hansungule

Michelo Kennedy Hansungule, a professor of human rights law at the University of Pretoria's (UP) Centre for Human Rights, passed away on 13 September at the age of 70. From 2004 up to his retirement a few years ago, he was a respected part of the centre team. Prof Hansungule was a Zambian by birth, but an African at heart. He was buried at his home in Choma, Zambia.

"The centre remembers, recognises, honours and thanks Prof Hansungule, a warm and wise human being, a true son of the African soil, for the substantial part he played in establishing the centre as a leading African human rights institution," said Prof Frans Viljoen, former Director of the centre.

When Prof Hansungule joined the Centre for Human Rights as a permanent full professor, he was one of the first black professors in the Faculty of Law. He broke new ground by becoming a role model for many young students. He brought with him accomplished academic credentials. In addition to LLB and LLM degrees, which he obtained at the University of Zambia, he also held an LLM from the University of Graz and a PhD from the University of Vienna.

Prof Hansungule taught international human rights law at universities around the world, including at the University of Lund in Sweden, Mahidol University in Thailand, Essex University in the UK, the University of Abo in Finland and the University of Malta. He was involved in outreach programmes in about 50 countries, where he taught judges, lawyers, governments and NGO officials about human rights protection.

Prof Hansungule was an activist-academic. He remained involved in domestic politics in Zambia, and played a prominent role in numerous international organisations. One of the best illustrations of the esteem in which he was held, was his membership as Commissioner of the International Commission of Jurists, for which he served three terms, from 2011 to 2023.

Passionate about human rights in Africa, Prof Hansungule was a member of the independent technical team established to measure the compliance of countries with the governance and human rights requirements of the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). He also served as an Independent Expert Member of the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, and as a board member for Minority Rights Group International. In 2013, he led SADC lawyers election observer missions in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.

As a teacher, Prof Hansungule had perfected the art of teaching law through storytelling. For many years, he taught on various centre programmes. Students from the Master's in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa (HRDA) and Multidisciplinary Human Rights, in particular, were often spellbound by his ability to weave together personal anecdotes, erudition and common sense.

His name has a special place in the field of children's rights in Africa. Indeed, the very first communication (complaint) submitted to the African Children's Rights Committee is Michelo Hansungule and Others (on behalf of Children in Northern Uganda) v Uganda. This complaint, which concerns the use of child soldiers by the government in the context of the conflict involving the Lord's Resistance Army, was prepared by students who were part of the Human Rights Clinic of the HRDA programme, who worked under his supervision.

At the centre, Prof Hansungule was recognised as a consummate human rights all-rounder, and has written several publications on human rights, human rights law and diverse legal subjects. He was the go-to presenter at countless centre events, always ready to share his wide-ranging insights based on a mixture of personal experience, research and reflection. His field of expertise was expansive, and ranged from socio-economic rights, children's rights and democracy in Africa to elections and election monitoring, United Nations and African Union human rights, and transitional justice. But no subject was closer to his heart than the right to development.

Within the centre, he took put together and oversaw an annual one-week advanced human rights course on this topic. This landmark course affirmed his conviction that the right to development was justiciable and a practical avenue to alleviate poverty and underdevelopment.

Prof Hansungule also excelled as a supervisor and was a mentor to many. In addition to the more than 100 master's dissertations over the years, he accompanied more than 25 doctoral students to completion. It is testimony to his inspirational mentoring that several of these doctoral graduates (including Professors Serges Kamga, Innocent Maja, Azubike Onoura and Ademola Jegede) have become respected academic leaders in their own right; and that one of his master's by research students, Duncan Gaswaga, was recently elected to the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights.

Inspired by Prof Hansungule, many of these students focused on aspects of the right to development. Many of this cohort of doctoral students - which could be termed the 'Pretoria Right to Development Scholars' - have made significant contributions to a burgeoning scholarship on the right to development in Africa.

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