I wrote the poem Robes Rob Us in a moment when my mind was clouded by the pressure of completing my PhD journey. It was during a conference on ‘Belonging and the Law as Relational Praxis’[1] at the Chair of African Legal Studies, a space where one would be expected to speak in the familiar register of legal research from an alley of rich themes and questions. The apprehensiveness of contributing to such a space, the rattled nerves of coming up with an article that speaks directly to the conference themes, and the need to balance my time to address the reviewers’ comments on my PhD. This pressure aroused a sense of resistance in me. Instead of footnotes, my mind carried images, symbols and metaphors. Instead of arguments, analogies and legal reasoning, I had feelings, which became heavy, unsettling, and insistent. Driven by such feelings, I read a poem:
Robes Rob Us
Gowns ground us
We are robed and grounded
When their owners are long gone
Leaving us chained to their gowns
Our systems smeared with doubt
Our institutions distrusted
Our oneness and confidence in ourselves rusted
Yet they are forever gone
And we feel we don’t belong
Or maybe their gowns and robes don’t belong
But it’s not wrong to Long
Maybe I’ve spoken for too long
Probably I’ve coined these lines long and wrong
But at least that’s how I feel I belong
Because these lines are not borrowed robes
As robes rob us
If these robes and gowns are gone
Maybe we will feel unclothed
But ‘ts better unclothed among your own
Cause we won’t feel alone and robbed
The motivation for a poem
The poem came from the weight of the wigs and gowns that surround legal education and legal authority. From the colours of the gown, worn according to the seasons of the year, to the type of materials from which the robes are made, the tradition dates back to 1327-77.[2] While the use of these wigs and gowns has sparked dissenting views and opinions, it is argued that the garments are intended to dignify the wearer, to signal expertise, and to declare one’s place within a long and respected legal tradition.[3]
While pursuing my studies and listening to debates on the evolution of the common law and how its artefacts were transplanted to Commonwealth countries, I felt a different truth beneath their surface. I felt how robes can also bind and constrain. How the wigs and gown can ground us in histories that we cannot relate to. How they can rob us of confidence when we do not feel like they are tailored for our shapes and sizes, let alone for the purpose that they serve.
Pursuing a PhD in law as someone who did not begin in the discipline meant constantly negotiating that double meaning. This was a change of disciplines and venturing into a fresh realm of knowledge with which I was not very familiar. Oftentimes, I was in rooms, yet at times unsure that these rooms were meant for me. I knew I had the right to speak, to research, to question, yet I felt the lingering discomfort of wearing robes that never quite fit.
At this conference, this poem gave me a language for this unease. An unease that was not about competence but about the inheritance of borrowed robes. The poem was a new gown for me. It was not a cover for the disturbing doubts. It was a way of expressing the law in a manner that can be easily relatable to people outside the discipline. An adornment of freedom to find a spotlight in a room full of other lights. This has continuously driven my study of the law. True to this feeling, it not only helped me reveal my innermost thoughts but also helped those in the room appreciate the need to discard the wigs and gowns that do not serve the rights of women and children affected by borrowed legal principles.[4]
Borrowed robes and the legal systems
From my reflection on the poem and discussing it with a colleague who attended the conference online, I realised that my sense of misfitting in the academic robe was intertwined with the ways laws themselves can misfit the societies they claim to serve. In both cases, belonging felt conditional, borrowed, and fragile. My colleague argued that the emotions behind the poem echoed neatly with the claims I am making in my research on Malawi’s Prevention of Domestic Violence Act (PDVA 2006). For instance, Western laws and policies have influenced the adjustment of African beliefs, cultures, values, and traditions.[5] Through colonisation, the colonisers rendered the indigenous ways of life, their laws, foods, dressing, and anything African as inferior.[6] Long after British or colonial direct rule has ended, its legacy lives on, manifest in the ways African countries still hold onto some of the things, values, ways of thinking, self-image, knowledge, and other aspects that remained after colonialism.[7] In the same vein, many African countries still look up to the colonisers for inspiration because they were made to believe that African ways of doing things are backwards and not progressive enough.[8] These assertions can be exemplified by how Malawi’s PDVA 2006, adorning borrowed robes from the UK’s Family Law Act 1996.
For instance, Section 33 (3) of the Family Law Act 1996, provides that an order under this section may enforce the applicant’s entitlement to remain in occupation as against the respondent; require the respondent to permit the applicant to enter and stay in the dwelling-house or part of the dwelling-house; and regulate the occupation of the dwelling-house by either or both parties.[9] This seems to mirror the Occupation Order, as outlined in Section 11 of Malawi’s PDVA 2006. The only difference here is that the terms and conditions for occupying the house or any other part of the household residence prescribed to the respondent have been shifted to the Schedules Section of the PDVA 2006. Nonetheless, this difference does not negate the opinion that the provision in the PDVA 2006 reflects those of the Family Law Act 1996. Consequently, it qualifies as a legal transplant or, as I put it in the poem, borrowed robes, where borrowed concepts, institutions, and structures undergo extensive reformulation while maintaining the core resemblance of the original idea.[10]
In my reflection, the poem arrived before I started thinking about the transplantation of the laws. It allowed me to feel the question before I could name it, providing a catharsis of some kind and a reflection worth taking during and after my PhD journey. It also prompts me to linger on some questions: What does it mean to belong to a discipline, to a society, to a legal system, to a history that is still unfolding, or to a history that seems seamless but is borrowed?
This contribution is a reflection by Gift Mauluka on his journey as a Ph.D. candidate at the Chair of African Legal Studies, which he successfully completed in 2025 as one of three graduates. A link to the publication of his dissertation can be found here.
[1] https://www.africanlegalstudies.uni-bayreuth.de/en/news/2025/Announcement-of-Conference_Call-for-Papers—Belonging-and-the-Law-as-Relational-Praxis/index.html.
[2] https://www.judiciary.uk/about-the-judiciary/history-of-the-judiciary-in-england-and-wales/history/.
[3] Kapil Summan ‘Scots lawyers massively in favour of retaining wigs and gowns’ Sottish Legal News 6 November 2019 https://www.scottishlegal.com/articles/scots-lawyers-massively-in-favour-of-retaining-wigs-and-gowns accessed 18 November 2025.
[4] This is central to the article that I have submitted for publication from this conference. Part of which is discussed below.
[5] Mugadza HT, Stout B, Akombi BJ, Tetteh VW, and Renzaho A, “The concept of a child within sub‐Saharan African migrant homes: Reconciling culture and child rights” (2019) 24(4) Child & Family Social Work 519.
[6] Mbondenyi K, International human rights and their enforcement in Africa (African Books Collective, 2011).
[7] This has been described as coloniality by Maldonado-Torres as cited in Sabelo Ndlovu‐Gatsheni, “Decoloniality as the future of Africa” (2015) 13(10) History Compass 485,487.
[8] As above, when he discusses Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s idea on decolonising the mind, 488.
[9] Family Law Act 1996, s 33(3).
[10] Nina Kršljanin, Legal Transplants (Springer eBooks 2023).
