Ubuntu and the Con-sequences of Juridification

Abstract

“Ubuntu” has meant many things to many people over the years. It features prominently in academic writing, makes frequent appearances in South Africa’s courts and remains a platitude uttered by many black South Africans struggling to reconcile the contents of ubuntu with the inhumane conditions in which they have found themselves since the advent of colonialism. While existing research on “ubuntu” is concerned with either finding new ways of integrating it into South African law or explaining that it is incompatible with the South African order, this study argues that “ubuntu” has already been entrenched in the law as ubulunguntu: a bastardised iteration of ubuntu that not only protects but bolsters the relations borne of the South African settler-colonial enterprise. This study will outline the sequence of events that led to the juridification of “ubuntu” before arguing that this juridification “killed” ubuntu and its aspirations. In this way, juridification is a disadvantage (or con) for the conquered. However, “death” is not final for the indigene of “South Africa” so ubuntu “lives” on as a member of the living-dead. Ubulunguntu’s juridification could allow the conquered to lay claim to the territory and title lost during conquest, making it disadvantageous for the conquerors and their allies.