Ubuntu Versus ubuntu: Finding a Philosophy of Justice Through Obligation

Leonhard Praeg's A Report on Ubuntu (2014) is a clever, if dense, treatise about the potential of Ubuntu as an emancipatory concept in the context of adjudication because of its function as a persistent demand to re-ask the question: 'what is justice?'. The book is a welcome defense of Ubuntu (in the hopes of reuniting it more closely with ubuntu) and a mesmerizing synthesis of existing literatures that, in combination, point to the transformative potential of Ubuntu as it may be deployed in adjudication in South African court cases. However, the ultimate place and thrust of Ubuntu in this equation is not entirely apparent. While Praeg admits that this project is messy, some of the messiness, especially that brought about by material inequalities as opposed to epistemological differences, might be more helpfully brought to the fore.