UBUNTU, a beautiful word. Ubuntu is recognised as being an important source of law within the context of strained or broken relationships amongst individuals or communities and as an aid for providing remedies which contribute towards more mutually acceptable remedies for the parties in such cases. Ubuntu is a concept which: 1.is to be contrasted with vengeance; 2.dictates that a high value be placed on the life of a human being; 3.is inextricably linked to the values of and which places a high premium on dignity, compassion, humaneness and respect for humanity of another; 4.dictates a shift from confrontation to mediation and conciliation; 5.dictates good attitudes and shared concern; 6.favours the re-establishment of harmony in the relationship between parties and that such harmony should restore the dignity of the plaintiff without ruining the defendant; 7.favours restorative rather than retributive justice; 8.operates in a direction favouring reconciliation rather than estrangement of disputants; 9.works towards sensitising a disputant or a defendant in litigation to the hurtful impact of his actions to the other party and towards changing such conduct rather than merely punishing the disputant; 10.promotes mutual understanding rather than punishment; 11.favours face-to-face encounters of disputants with a view to facilitating differences being resolved rather than conflict and victory for the most powerful; 12.favours civility and civilised dialogue premised on mutual tolerance A person is a person through other people strikes an affirmation of one’s humanity through recognition of an “other” in his or her uniqueness and difference. It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the “other” becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity. This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me. Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation. And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am. The “I am” is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance.
Posted on: Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:27:54 +0000
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