Law and Revolution in South Africa: uBuntu, Dignity, and the Struggle for Constitutional Transformation

by Drucilla Cornell

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823257584
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	04/03/2014
Series:	Just Ideas
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Drucilla Cornell is Professor of Political Science, Women's and Gender Studies, and
Comparative Literature at Rutgers University. She also teaches at Birkbeck College, University of London and the University of Pretoria in South Africa. Her most recent books are uBuntu and the Law: African Ideals and Postapartheid Jurisprudence and The Dignity Jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court of South Africa: Cases and Materials, Volumes I & II (both Fordham).

Table of Contents

Preface

1. Introduction: Transitional Justice Versus Substantive Revolution

Should Critical Theory Remain Revolutionary?
2. Is Technology a Fatal Destiny? The Relevance of Heidegger for South Africa and for All "Developing" Countries
3. Socialism or Radical Democratic Politics? On Laclau and Mouffe

The Legal Challenge of uBuntu
4. Dignity Violated: Rethinking AZAPO Through uBuntu
5. Which Law, Whose Humanity? The Significance of Policulturalism in the Global South
6. The Significance of the Living Customary Law for an Understanding of Law: Does Custom Allow for a Woman to Be Hosi?

The Struggle over uBuntu
7. uBuntu, Pluralism, and the Responsibility of Legal Academics to the New South Africa
8. Rethinking Ethical Feminism Through uBuntu
9. Is There a Difference that Makes a Difference Between Dignity and uBuntu?
10. Where Dignity Ends and uBuntu Begins - A Response by Yvonne Mokgoro and Stu Woolman

Conclusion: uBuntu and Subaltern Legality

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

"This book is a rare one-the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice—reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting—the author shifts the question toward what she calls 'substantive revolution.' This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory- from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers- the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution."-John Drabinski, Amherst College

From the Publisher

Partly focusing on South Africa as a case study, Cornell considers the challenge of reconstructing a government after the revolutionary overthrow of past dictatorships.

Journal of the American Bar Foundation Law & Social Inquiry

Law & Revolution in South Africa continues Drucilla Cornell’s path breaking work on indigenous law formation in post-apartheid South Africa. The essays collected here add to her evolving approach to fundamental ideas of law, politics, and ethics as informing uBuntu, living customary law, and dignity jurisprudence in South Africa. This book bears directly on the vibrant ongoing debate in South Africa about how to restore societal respect for law in light of its gross misappropriation during the many decades of abuse by colonialist and racist control of the country and the accompanying gruesome suppression of the native population. This is a fascinating debate that should be of interest to all those concerned with achieving legitimacy for the institutions and procedures of legality following a transition to constitutional democracy, and especially the extent to which values embedded in customary legal traditions can be used by courts in wrestling with sensitive legal disputes from morally reconstructive perspectives.

Princeton University - Richard Falk

This book is a rare one–the reflections on philosophy, law, and political theory are profound and moving. Rather than reproduce the multiple stages of debate surrounding transitional justice – reconciliation vs. forgiveness, memory vs. forgetting– the author shifts the question toward what she calls ‘substantive revolution.’ This marks an advance in discussions of reconciliation and political life after massive, sustained spasms of violence. When one adds to that a significant dose of philosophy and critical theory – from Heidegger through contemporary political philosophers – the book takes on a new thread in theorizing transition and gives it real complexity. Substantive revolution is deepened by critical theory, critical theory is deepened by engagement with the concrete work of substantive revolution.

Amherst College - John Drabinski