A CRITICAL REVIEW OF UBUNTU: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS WITH KANT’S RETRIBUTIVISM
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Abstract
This paper charts out the political and historical circumstances that evinced the creation of Ubuntu as a socio-legal concept in South African jurisprudence. By analyzing the content of this ideology, and by interrogating the conceptual substance of it, the paper will try to delineate and posit Ubuntu as a formidable contender for Immanuel Kant’s conception of retributivism as a categorical imperative. A comparative reading of The South African Constitution and the decisions of the South African Constitutional Court with that of the works of Immanuel Kant will be undertaken to show the sophistry and maturity of the former, albeit undermined, ignored and sidestepped.
In doing so, this paper will challenge the hegemonic conceptualization of Kant’s model, by the Western World, as idealistic in penology. Vide case laws from South Africa, and scholarly work across jurisdictions, this paper will attempt to argue why Ubuntu has in it the potential to radically reform the modern frameworks of justice, punishment and penology.
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