Source — S v Makwanyane and Another, Constitutional Court of South Africa (1995), judgment of Mokgoro J
- Title: S v Makwanyane and Another (CCT3/94) [1995] ZACC 3 — concurring judgment of Mokgoro J
- Author: Yvonne Mokgoro, Justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa
- Publication: Wikisource, transcribing the court's own judgment text (also available at SAFLII, saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html, not itself fetched this session)
- Date: judgment handed down 6 June 1995
- URL: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/S_v_Makwanyane_and_Another/Mokgoro_J
- Accessed: 2026-09-02
- Type: primary — a sitting judge's own written opinion, directly read (not secondhand). Public-domain judicial text.
Extract
The case struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional under South Africa's 1993 Interim Constitution; Mokgoro J's concurrence is the judgment most cited (per sources/scielo-malan-2014-ubuntu-constitutional-law.md) for its extended treatment of ubuntu as a legal concept.
Paragraph 307, on ubuntu's constitutional status:
"...one shared value and ideal that runs like a golden thread across cultural lines, is the value of ubuntu — a notion now coming to be generally articulated in this country. ... Not only is the notion of ubuntu expressly provided for in the epilogue of the Constitution, the underlying idea and its accompanying values are also expressed in the preamble."
Paragraph 308, on ubuntu's meaning and translation:
"Generally, ubuntu translates as humaneness. In its most fundamental sense, it translates as personhood and morality. Metaphorically, it expresses itself in umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, describing the significance of group solidarity on survival issues so central to the survival of communities. ... While it envelops the key values of group solidarity, compassion, respect, human dignity, conformity to basic norms and collective unity, in its fundamental sense it denotes humanity and morality."
Paragraph 311, connecting the concept to the death-penalty holding:
"Central to this commitment is the need to revive the value of human dignity in South Africa... The concept of ubuntu embodies them both."
- A sitting South African Constitutional Court justice's own judgment offers a direct, explicit translation attempt ("translates as humaneness... personhood and morality") rather than declaring the word untranslatable outright — closer in shape to Peeters's academic-linguistics "highly polysemous, not a true gap" finding for gezellig (
sources/anupress-peeters-2020-gezellig.md) than to a flat "no English word for this" popular claim, though Mokgoro J still treats the word as carrying more than any single English gloss captures ("envelops the key values of...").
Gaps
- This project read only Mokgoro J's concurrence, not Chaskalson P's majority judgment or Justice Langa's separate concurrence, both of which also discuss ubuntu (per the secondary source at
sources/scielo-malan-2014-ubuntu-constitutional-law.md, which quotes Langa J directly: "respect for human dignity, marking a shift from confrontation to conciliation," and "heinous crimes are the antithesis of ubuntu"). Those quotations are filed here as reported by Malan's secondary account, not independently verified against the primary judgment text. - Wikisource's paragraph numbering may not exactly match the court's own official paragraph numbering in all published reports of the case; not cross-checked against SAFLII's own numbering this session.