Archives of Humanities & Social Sciences Research
- ISSN: 3065-3568
Davison Zireva and Richard Masinire
The essence for judging the quality of a society with reference to social organisation is determined among other things by its jurisprudence. The societies influenced by the Unhu/Ubuntu philosophy were capable of executing the essence of social justice before emasculation of their socio-cultural and political values by Eurocentric values. Unhu/Ubuntu jurisprudence was hinged on theocracy and gerontocracy. The colonialist and imperialists employed the philosophy of modernism as hegemony to influence societies guided by Unhu/Ubuntu societies to despise their quintessential execution of social justice. A sample of ten elderly people of ages between sixty-eight and ninety-five were purposively sampled and interviewed. The informants were from Masvingo District in Zimbabwe. The research findings point to that social justice was an issue that brought together the whole community, the ancestral spirits of the land and The Creator. When one committed a crime the verdict came from all the stakeholders. The chief who was selected by the leading-clan ancestral spirits was their physical representative and mouthpiece on all jurisprudential issues. The “modernisation” of the traditional socio-cultural and political values was a gimmick employed by the colonialists and imperialists to perpetuate their interests through executing exotic deliverance of social justice which is largely considered as chaotic by the indigenous people. There is a dire need to be engaged in archaeology of Unhu/Ubuntu jurisprudence in an endeavour to share some insights with the formalised modern jurisprudence on some issues of executing social justice.