ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the notion of injury in some Zambian tribes is rooted in a concern to protect the integrity of the person. The cross-examinations cited inquire into motive, but in no case did drunkenness, provocation, or legitimate grievance affect liability. There has been little systematic discussion of the nature of liability for wrongs in African customary law though this is crucial for an understanding of any legal system and its underlying principles. T. O. Elias has in his The Nature of African Customary Law criticized misconceptions that African law takes little account of the mental element and is marked by ‘absolute liability’, and insisted that on the contrary ‘motive, accident, intention, largely enter into every considered judgment’. The most obvious and elementary instance of injury is the direct application of physical violence by one person to the body of another.
