HUMA African Epistemologies Advanced Seminar Series

Speaker: Keolebogile Mbebe (University of Pretoria, South Africa)

Introduction: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of South Africa is still considered a model to be followed worldwide in societies undergoing regime change after periods of gross injustice, and there is still a widely held belief that the TRC' gifted' the country with a common history and the possibility for a just shared future. The interim Constitution of South Africa of 1993, which was the mandating legislation for the TRC, states that "there is a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation" as a response to apartheid, but it provides no explanation as to what exactly understanding or ubuntu are, or what their links to reconciliation are.

According to former South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the chairperson of the Commission, having a retributive response to perpetrators would not be a viable option bearing in mind the need for national unity. This is the conclusion reached when retributive justice is assumed to have little regard for the well-being of both victims and perpetrators. Instead, says Tutu, the idea of justice embodied by the Commission was restorative justice, which he explains to be a tenet of ubuntu. Ubuntu – a Bantu word translatable as humanness – is generally considered to be based on the maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu – a person attains their personhood from the relationship with other persons. However, it can be argued that the TRC did not in fact respect the personhood of the victims of apartheid, making its perceived philosophy untenable and morally suspect. This is especially salient given the theological undercurrents that permeated the ethical structure of the Commission, such as the pressure on victims to forgive their perpetrators.

The paper being proposed argues that the TRC did not take seriously the ethic of the indigenous people conquered in the unjust wars of colonisation – ubuntu – and instead perpetuated the cycle of epistemic colonial violence through the sustenance of a white supremacist logic in its diagnosis and prognosis of historical injustice in South Africa. 

Keolebogile Mbebe

About the speaker: Keolebogile Mbebe is a lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is currently studying towards a PhD in the Department of Jurisprudence at the same university. She is a two-time recipient of National Research Foundation (NRF) study grants and a recipient of the award for the most meritorious Master's study in the faculty of Humanities at the end of her Master's studies at the University of Johannesburg. Her most recent publication is the journal article Whites Cannot Be Black: A Bikoist challenge to Professor Xolela Mangcu (2018). Her forthcoming book chapter is titled: "Blackness as a Conundrum for Phenomenology". The title of her PhD is "Tracing the Doctrine Of Discovery in the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act: Truth and the Question of Historical Justice".

The main themes of Ms Mbebe's research centre around issues of justice, race, emotions, moral philosophy, philosophy of law, and history. Mbebe is a founding member of The Azanian Philosophical Society (APS), a multi-disciplinary social sciences and humanities association. The APS is a vehicle for the promotion and development of African philosophy and autonomous African philosophical thinking in the social sciences. Prior to her work in the academy, she has been an award-winning journalist and a communication officer for the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Social Development in Africa. She is the founder and convenor of a black women interuniversity PhD writing circle.

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