The Jurisprudence of Nelson Mandela: A Testament to Dignity

In this dissertation, I advance the thesis that Nelson Mandela’s jurisprudence reflects a testament to dignity. Specifically, I argue that Mandela’s worldview can illuminatingly be translated into a Kantian-like discourse on human dignity, a discourse that reveals a Dworkinian-like jurisprudential orientation centred around three interconnected legal values: the nature of justice, the rule of law, and human rights. The study posits that the residue of Mandela’s education in the Anglo-European philosophy of law and his upbringing in the African philosophy of ubuntu was an abiding sense of the interrelationship between law and morality, between justice and the rule of law, and the role of justice as that singular socio-legal imperative that serves to dignify the lives of citizens and to affirm their essential worth as human beings. Such an orientation, filtered through a worldview premised on human dignity and a political morality founded on freedom, equality, and democracy, provides the portal through which Mandela’s jurisprudence is revealed. The investigation unfolds through systematic unpacking of the history of the tripartite political struggle between African, Afrikaner, and Briton into which Mandela was born, followed by an examination of the jurisprudential traditions to which he was exposed during his formative years, legal studies, and practice of law. Next, it turns to Mandela’s political awakening and the evolution of his thinking towards a Kantian-like concept of human dignity as the animating principle of his worldview which, in turn, engaged a Dworkinian-like orientation in his jurisprudence. The study then analyses Mandela’s words and symbolic actions in speeches and trials up to and including the 1995 Truth & Reconciliation Commission and the interim Constitution of 1993 and final Constitution of 1996, to test the posited thesis about Mandela’s political morality, worldview, and jurisprudence. The study identifies in Mandela’s words and symbolic deeds a coherent jurisprudence that can credibly be described as a jurisprudence premised on a Grundnorm of human dignity. Such jurisprudence intuitively perceived justice—a sense of fairness “drawn from dignity and aim[ed] at dignity”—as the normative opposite of apartheid and as foundational to the legal and constitutional order of the “ideal society” to which he committed his life and for which he was prepared to die.

Grantor dc:publisher

Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Van der Merwe, Anton Johan

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Botha, Henk

Language dc:language.iso

en

Repository record dc:identifier.uri

https://scholar.sun.ac.za/handle/10019.1/135694

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholar.sun.ac.za:10019.1/135694