Abstract
AbstractIndigenous Southern Africans say that their laws are fundamentally grounded in the principle of Ubu‐Ntu (humane‐ness), but their communities are found empirically to often show the opposite of that law. Why is this? What is the law to which they lay claim to having? What are its roots and how can we reliably trace and know them? Reverting to the deep (i.e., unrecorded/unwritten precolonial) history of the Ntu, who make up the largest language group of Indigenous inhabitants of Sub‐Saharan Africa, this article digs into the deep origins of Ntu identity and being. Based on evidence drawing simultaneously from the alter‐Native intellectual roots of the Ntu and ethnographic findings on articulations of vernacular law in Nguni‐speaking society in South Africa today, the article makes the decolonizing case that Indigenous law lays claim to having its own constitutional law (in which its peoples’ social compact is grounded), with its very own conception of rights, that is wholly due (legal) recognition and respect in place of laws born of colonial logics.
Published Version
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