Indigenous African ethics and land distribution

Abstract

This article focuses on land allocation through invoking African values. It seeks to provide a contrast to other rectifications of skewed colonial land distributions from African values, and it also offers an alternative to the land distributive justice that has tended to be premised on Western entitlement or rights-oriented thought. The article proposes conceptualising land distribution specifically based on indigenous African ethics of Unhu/ubuntu, a quintessential southern African ethic of being humane and living communally. The humaneness and communitarian life are centred on values such as relationality, cooperation, common good and equal distribution of communal goods. Through articulating each value, and indicating its usefulness in land distribution, the article hopes to provide an African account of distributive justice in respect of land redistribution.