This chapter builds on Chapter 2 by explaining the etymologies of the complainant parents’ vernacular normative convictions – centring on Ubu-Ntu – that were woefully misunderstood and dismissed by the court in Komape. Thus, using language to uncover the self-conception and values of pre-colonial southern Africans, such as relational personhood and social organization, it explores how decolonising ‘the common law’ by recognising the Komape family’s world-sense requires focusing on the indigenous intellectual roots of the Ntu. It argues that these offer alter-Native ways of understanding concepts, challenging dominant European frameworks and (il)legalities. The analysis draws from ethnographic constitutional research and the sociolinguistic record, aiming to recover neglected histories of indigenous peoples’ identities and normative frameworks, often oversimplified as ‘customary law’, that still influence contemporary legal norms and social orders. Reclaiming indigenous ways of being and knowing, it highlights the often-muted gendered aspects of indigenous intellectual histories that would contribute to a more holistic understanding of social justice. Ultimately, the chapter calls for rethinking South African constitutionalism beyond Euro-American conceptions thereof, focusing on Ntu legalities and intellectual traditions. This offers a pathway to justice rooted in vernacular perspectives, which remain critical to addressing contemporary socio-legal challenges, as exemplified by the Komape case.

This coda takes the form of a sample judgment that rewrites Baron and Others v Claytile (Pty) Limited and Another [2017] to tangibly illustrate the promise of Alter-Native Constitutionalism. Contrasted with the real-life judgment issued by the Constitutional Court, which relied on liberal approaches, the Alter-Native ‘judgment’ gives willing courts the necessary tools to enforce the ‘property’ rights of ‘non-owners’ and thus highlights the opportunities for equitable solutions the Court has missed, including in its real-life judgment. Emphasizing the importance of robustly applying Ubu-Ntu (rather than the insipid ‘ubuntu’ that scholars and the Court have substituted for it) and applying Ntu Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation developed earlier in the book, the opinion demonstrates existing possibilities for recognising shared rights and promoting housing as a relational, spatiotemporal ‘existence’. By reinterpreting constitutional and legislative provisions to respect indigenous onto-epistemological perspectives on land-as-housing, the Alter-Native opinion demonstrates a transformative approach to ‘property law’ that inherently critiques the Constitutional Court’s interpretation of the ‘property’ and ‘housing’ clauses largely to the exclusion of vernacular law. This Alter-Native opinion thus presents a literally embodied argument for the need for broadening restitution, addressing both enduring injustices and future possibilities over multiple generations.

In Tongoane v National Minister for Agriculture and Land Affairs, the Constitutional Court of South Africa ruled that the government’s attempt to regulate property in traditional communities through the Communal Land Rights Act (CLARA) was unconstitutional. It emphasised that traditional land was already governed by indigenous ‘living law’ and CLARA sought to replace this vernacular law, a system evolved over time, with legislation. This highlighted the presence of indigenous law predating colonialism, challenging colonial notions like ‘lex nullius’ (no law) and ‘terra nullius’ (empty land), which denied indigenous Africans their rights. This chapter argues that South Africa’s post-apartheid constitutional vision fails to fully recognise and integrate this vernacular law, undermining true transformation, and instead advocates for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’, which would amalgamate ‘customary’, ‘common’ and vernacular law to reflect the realities and normative convictions of most South Africans. This approach aims to rectify historical injustices and create a more just legal system, rooted in indigenous values and addressing social and economic inequities. Explicating the indigenously feminist decolonising concept of Alter-Native Constitutionalism, the chapter calls for reconstitution of South Africa’s legal framework and content to give full voice to indigenous world-sense and law-sense, advocating a shift away from Eurocentric logics and norms.

Introducing the book’s third essential part on ‘property’, this chapter sets out Alter-Native Constitutionalism’s jurisprudential framework for constitutional and statutory interpretation informed by vernacular law and oriented towards the everyday, ordinary South African as the ‘reasonable’ person in law. It draws on ethnography and sociolinguistics, problematising the continuities in how democratic South African law treats ‘customary law’ consistently with colonial-apartheid. A SiSwati conversation with Make Ng’Gogo frames the chapter’s exploration of vernacular law’s indigenous ethical orientation, embodied in Ubu-Ntu, as it applies to guiding not only societal organisation but also land rights – emphasising human-centred values over individualistic property rights. By first examining indigenous normative relationships with land then translating their application into critique of Constitutional Court interpretive practices, the chapter advances an Alter-Native framework that represents a paradigm shift in constitutional interpretation, privileging Ubu-Ntu’s holistic world-sense. This framework advocates reinterpretation of dignity and rights under the Constitution, moving beyond Western legal principles toward a jurisprudence grounded in indigenous natural law and relational ethics. The chapter argues for South Africa’s Constitutional Court to adopt this indigenously transformative constitutional approach to interpretation, treating vernacular law as equally legitimate to European ‘common law’ and thereby making truly transformative socioeconomic outcomes more possible.

This chapter argues that the Afrobarometer survey findings indicating South Africans’ preference for housing over land are easily misunderstood. Supported by modern science, it emphasises human interconnectedness as evidenced and grounded in land-based relationships. The chapter therefore critiques the limited world-sense within which ‘property’ is conceived in Ramuhovhi and Malan and, instead, amalgamates vernacular, ‘(un)customary’, and ‘(un)common’ law to illustrate how relationships, ‘seen’ particularly through the spatiotemporal lens of Ubu-Ntu, might deepen our constitutional understanding of ‘property’. It thus shows how the concept of ‘house’ (beyond physical structure) – perceived in ‘vernacular time’, rather than Euromodernity’s ‘colonial time’ – equitably shapes ‘property’ rights, linking them to multigenerational ‘survivance’ and thereby integrating Ntu principles into contemporary legal interpretations. Hence, the chapter concludes the book by demonstrating how embracing the vernacular law conceptions of ‘human(e) existence’, ‘rights’ and ‘house’ would transform the sociolegal reality for South Africans by decolonising it and achieving sustainable socioeconomic change. Returning to encounters in Mbuzini, the chapter ends by highlighting young people’s understandings of Ubu-Ntu and ‘housing’ amidst colonial law’s afterlives and vernacular law’s continued erasure. It contends that true transformation demands respecting the country’s constitutional commitments by genuinely representing all South Africans’ diverse normative ideals.

This chapter builds on the call for ‘Alter-Native Constitutionalism’ due to the inadequacies of South Africa’s transformative constitutionalism in achieving economic and social justice by examining how South Africa’s legal system can realise the necessary shift towards a truly common law. It therefore outlines the technical steps required to amalgamate ‘common’, ‘customary’ and ‘vernacular’ law, proposing a framework where vernacular law – reflecting the lived experiences and cultural norms of the majority population – underpins the whole legal system rather than being confined to isolated ‘cultural’ domains. Drawing on centuries-long debates among scholars of indigenous law, yet recognising that there are foundational similarities between vernacular and state law that can be leveraged, it stresses the care necessary in blending Western and Indigenous knowledges. It highlights that, for this integration to succeed, courts need to adopt a flexible, context-sensitive approach that respects vernacular law’s process-centred-based nature. The chapter thus advocates for preserving vernacular legal processes (because their consultation-based, adaptive structure is key to the law’s legitimacy), as well as vernacular law’s core content (especially around needs-based claims, multigenerational provision and protecting relational structures), as the primary means by which South Africa can achieve a genuinely transformative and common legal order.