Setfulo lesinenhlonipho: Utsini Make Ng’Gogo NgeBuNtfu

This tribute article contrasts the deeply rooted, vernacular understanding of ubu-Ntu (buntfu) with its interpretation by the South African Constitutional Court. Reading an interview with Make Ng’Gogo (a female traditional councillor in rural Mpumalanga) ethnographically, the article illustrates how buntfu operates as a concrete, relational ontology prioritising basic needs, collective survival, and socioeconomic justice over individualistic “paper rights”. As shown by closely examining the 2020 Beadica judgment, in contrast, the Court often reduces “ubuntu” to an “abstract concept” or “value” subordinated to European-descended, colonial-apartheid legal principles like pacta sunt servanda. The article argues that this judicial abstraction perpetuates an “(un)common law” that alienates the majority of South Africans, who are aba-Ntu (bantfu), and their lived realities and normative convictions. Drawing on historical (socio)linguistic evidence from Ntu languages as an archive, the article demonstrates how the literal, relational nature of ubu-Ntu is lost in translation via the Court’s majority view of “ubuntu”. The paper ultimately advocates for “Alter-Native Constitutionalism” (or Ntu Constitutionalism) as a transformative legal approach that centers the vernacular law (isi-Ntu) of aba-Ntu. It hereby contends that grounding the entire South African legal system in this indigenously-founded alter-Native world-sense offers a way toward a genuinely transformative and humane sociolegality.