Can African Juridical Principles Redeem and Legitimise Contemporary Human Rights Jurisprudence?

Abstract

The question of bringing justice closer to citizens is often regarded either from an equidistant perspective, or from the angle of affordability. The epistemological question of whether notions of justice practised by constitutional institutions resonate with the value systems and cosmological perspectives of the citizens, is shrouded in the mists of the jurisprudential discourse of most post-colonial jurisdictions. This article contends that the dominant human rights jurisprudence in post-colonial Africa remains only tangentially relevant because it is moulded by the inherently exclusionary constitutive rules associated with Western enlightenment. African juridical principles provide more appropriate social justice for the vast majority of the African citizenry as they speak to a social organisation underpinned by the values of belonging, sharing, and restoration of social equilibrium.