Thinking Capital and Colonialism in South Africa : The Problem of Justice

Abstract

Notwithstanding the epistemological problems with the dominant appreciations of human rights, the problem with dominant ways of understanding justice for colonial repression post colonialism is that they misplace the logic whence the repression stems. In this paper I propose a revisiting of the historical materialist approach to justice, as a way to strengthen the scholarship on justice in South Africa. I essentially deal with two contending arguments on the debate on justice in South Africa, namely transformative constitutionalism, the position of constitutional romantics, and Azanian political thought, propounded by what are termed constitutional abolitionists in this paper. Moreover, using Bernard Magubane's critical socio-historical explanation of South Africa and Evgeny Pashukanis' legal theory of Marxism, I offer a third way which opens up some of the theoretical deficiencies of transformative constitutionalism as it pertains to South Africa. Ultimately, in this paper, I attempt to move from a descriptive and ideological appreciation of justice, to a conception of justice rooted in the materiality of social relations.