Ubuntu: An African jurisprudence

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.