This book brings together the uBuntu jurisprudence of South Africa, as well as the most cutting-edge critical essays about South African jurisprudence on uBuntu. Can indigenous values be rendered compatible with a modern legal system? This book raises some of the most pressing questions in cultural, political, and legal theory.

Ubuntu: An African Jurisprudence examines how and why South African courts and law-makers have been using the concept of ubuntu over the last thirty years, reflecting the views of judges and scholars, and above all proclaiming the importance of this new idea for South African legal thinking. Although ubuntu is the product of relations in and between the close-knit groups of a precolonial society, its basic aims - social harmony and caring for others - give it an inherently inclusive scope. This principle is therefore quite capable of embracing all those who constitute the heterogeneous populations of modern states. Included in this work are discussions of two traditional institutions that provide model settings for the realisation of ubuntu: imbizo, national gatherings consulted by traditional rulers to decide matters of general concern, and indaba, a typically African process of making decisions based on the consensus of the group. Courts and law-makers have used imbizo to give effect to the constitutional requirement of participatory democracy, and indaba to suggest an alternative method of decisionmaking to systems of majority voting. Ubuntu offers something extraordinarily valuable to South Africa and, in fact, to the wider world. Its emphasis on our responsibility for the welfare of our fellow beings acts as a timely antidote not only to the typically rationalist, disinterested system of justice in Western law, but also to the sense of anomie so prevalent in today's society.

The relation between law and revolution is one of the most pressing questions of our time. As one country after another has faced the challenge that comes with the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships, how one reconstructs a new government is a burning issue. South Africa, after a long and bloody armed struggle and a series of militant uprisings, negotiated a settlement for a new government and remains an important example of what a substantive revolution might look like. The essays collected in this book address both the broader question of law and revolution and some of the specific issues of transformation in South Africa.

This book argues for the existence of a court enforceable human right to water that is implied from the right to life in Article 6 of the Namibian Constitution. The book builds this argument by using tools of constitutional interpretation and with the aid of comparative materials. As such, the African value of ubuntu is invoked. Ubuntu – which is legally developed through its four key principles of community, interdependence, dignity and solidarity – is anchored in a novel approach to Namibian constitutional interpretation that is conceptualised as ‘re-invigorative constitutionalism’. The book advances the ‘AQuA’ (adequacy – quality – accessibility) content of water and articulates the correlative duties within the context of the respect – protect – fulfil trilogy, which are duties imposed upon the Namibian state as the primary duty bearer for a right to water. These duties include irreducible essential content duties that are argued to be immediate when compared to general obligations. In giving substance to duties that flow from a right to water, international law interpretative resources are also relied upon, including General Comment No 15 by the United Nations Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, the African Commission’s Principles and Guidelines on Social and Economic Rights, and the World Health Organisation’s Drinking-water Quality Guidelines. Moreover, the book addresses various justiciability concerns that may arise, arguing that Namibian courts are institutionally competent and legitimate in enforcing right to water claims through the application of the bounded deliberation model. Additionally, because the Principles of State Policy in Article 95 of the Namibian Constitution are rendered court unenforceable by Article 101, the argument is made that this does not undermine the claim that a right to water, anchored in the right to life, can be enforced through the courts. - Dr Ndjodi Ndeunyema Modern Law Review Early Career Research Fellow, University of Oxford.

Many have argued that ubuntu was a formative influence on the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), South Africa’s famous transitional justice mechanism. A Discourse on African Philosophy: A New Perspective on Ubuntu and Transitional Justice in South Africa challenges and contextualizes this view in a way that not only provides new findings and reflections on ubuntu and the TRC, but also contributes to the field of African philosophy. One of Christian B. N. Gade’s key findings, founded on qualitative interviews in South Africa, is that some former TRC commissioners and committee members question the importance of ubuntu in the TRC process. Another is that there are several differing and historically developing interpretations of ubuntu, some of which have evident political implications and reflect non-factual and creative uses of history. Thus ubuntu is not a shared cultural heritage, in the ethnophilosophical sense of a static property characterizing a group. In fact, throughout this book Gade argues that the ethnophilosophical approach to African philosophy as a static group property is highly problematic. Gade’s research presents an alternative collective discourse on African philosophy (“collective” in the sense that it does not focus on any single individual in particular) that takes differences, historical developments, and social contexts seriously. This book will be of interest to scholars in African philosophy, transitional justice, politics and cultural heritage, and law in South Africa.

This book promotes discussion and understanding of customary law and explores its continued relevance in sub-Saharan Africa. It considers the characteristics of customary law and efforts to ascertain and codify customary law, and how this body of law differs in content, form and status from legislation and common law.