For the purposes of this book AIKS will be viewed as the combination of knowledge, skills and practices embedded in cultural beliefs, practices and traditional instructions that are used by specific cultural groups in conducting their developmental activities, which should be integrated into the ways of life in the African communities for improved living standards. The paper concludes that given Ubuntu’s capacity to constitute order, it can therefore be reasonably argued that it has the potential to deliver ‘justice as fairness’.Īfrican Indigenous Knowledge Systems (AIKS) and epistemologies are a complex field, which when viewed from an educational perspective, spans several complex concepts across disciplines and cultures. They are vital fora for political communication and education. The indaba, lekgotla and the pitso constitute elements of ‘social contract theory’ as articulated by Rousseau. And while ‘justice as fairness’ is anchored on ‘the social contract’, African traditional democracy operates in a form of discussion, or an indaba, (open discussion by a group of people with a common interest), a lekgotla (a scheduled discussion at a secluded venue), or a pitso (a public assembly for discussing issues of national concern). Traditional African community represents Ubuntu. That is, doing what is right and moral in the indigenous African society.

Indeed in Southern Africa Justice is perceived as Ubuntu fairness. It also embodies values, morals, and notions of traditional African communal justice.

Ubuntu is not only a moral theory concerned with infusing humane dispositions. ‘Justice as fairness’ points to ‘the moral powers’ that people have, related to their ‘capacity for a sense of justice’ and ‘for a conception of the good’. This paper juxtaposes John Rawls’s ‘justice as fairness’ as articulated in A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism, with an African worldview knows as Ubuntu with a view to ascertaining whether Ubuntu can deliver ‘justice as fairness’ in South Africa, which is liberal and egalitarian, while also deeply influenced by indigenous African values and epistemologies, or ways of knowing.

Rawls 1999 a theory of justice