Abstract
M.A. (Philosophy)
In our present day, we see more equality in a democratic South Africa, with many working towards a humane democracy, guided by Ubuntu, the Nguni word for humanness often used to summarize morality. The ethic of Ubuntu is usually referred to when we use the maxim “umuntu ngu muntu nga bantu” which roughly translates into ‘a person is a person through other persons’ or ‘I am because we are’.
Even though this may be the case, we do not experience Ubuntu much in practice in the general public sphere, let alone in our prison system and judicial proceedings. There may be various reasons behind this, but one of the main reasons, in my view, is that globalization has provided us with multiple theories/methods to deal with criminal offenders and victims and Ubuntu, a specifically African and not-so global ethic, is usually kept as an alternative for times when theories that are most prominent in Western ethics like those of retribution have been exhausted. Although retribution is not purely a Western idea, it is most prominent in the west and has been made prolific by the west too. The concept of retributive justice has been used in a variety of ways, but in the punishment context; retribution is the desire to react unto wrongful acts with a vengeful form of equity, of the kind we express in the phrase ’an eye for an eye’ (Matshaba, 2007, pg. 21).
Aside from it being a form of justice not born of the African tradition another issue with retribution, however, is that it does not restore relations and any lost human dignity; it simply distributes what is owed and the equivalent punishment, but does not repair the dignity and lives of the people involved or even address the cause of that situation. It is an objective way of dealing with criminal and victim but seems to do very little to rebuild any broken relationships. It is rare to find those affected going back to living amongst each other and being able to move on with life. “The righteous anger of family and friends of the murder victim, reinforced by the public abhorrence of vile crimes, is easily translated into a call for vengeance” (Constitutional Court of South Africa Case No...