Colonialism, Customary Authority, and Constitutionalism: Rethinking Gender, Justice, and Tenure Reform in South Africa through Ubuntu and Intersectionality

This thesis investigates how South African constitutional, property, and customary law frameworks shape women’s tenure security and gendered experiences of justice. Although the Constitution enshrines equality and nondiscrimination, deeply embedded patriarchal norms within institutions and, at times, within the practices through which statutory law is implemented, continue to undermine women’s land rights. Situated within a plural legal order, the research examines how these overlapping frameworks sustain ambiguity and hinder substantive equality. Grounded in feminist legal theory, this study conceives law as a gendered and contested social field rather than a neutral instrument. It draws from feminist socio-legal scholarship to interrogate how power, discourse, and interpretation reproduce inequality, and how alternative epistemologies can unsettle those hierarchies. Using ubuntu and intersectionality as complementary analytical frameworks, the thesis re-thinks the relationship between law, custom, and gender justice. Intersectionality exposes how gender intersects with class, race, and rurality to shape women’s differentiated experiences of land and belonging while Ubuntu provides a relational ethic emphasising community, dignity, and mutual recognition. Qualitative inquiry, including semi-structed interviews with lawyers, activists, and community leaders, served as an analytical tool to illuminate how actors interpret and negotiate women’s land rights in practice. The analysis argues that meaningful tenure reform depends on transcending the dichotomy between constitutional universality and customary particularism. The thesis concludes that a transformative approach to tenure reform requires bringing relational ethics into dialogue with structural analysis, thereby advancing a vision of justice that is both culturally grounded and constitutionally robust. By bringing ubuntu’s relational jurisprudence into conversation with intersectionality's critical insights, the study contributes to feminist legal scholarship and deepens socio-legal understandings of gender, law, and land in post-apartheid South Africa.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Ph.D.

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

PhD thesis

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Westminster

Year dc:date.issued

2026

Author dc:creator

• Chitare, Takudzwa

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Chryssostalis, J.
• Phillips, O.
• Voiculescu, Aurora

Identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x737w

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk:x737w