Book Launch: “Re-Invigorating Ubuntu through Water” by Dr. Ndjodi Ndeunyema.
DATE: 10 March 2022
TIME: 15h00 – 16h30 (GMT plus 2)
LOCATION: Zoom Meeting
RSVP: naomi@saifac.org.za
Dr Ndeunyama will provide an outline of the book followed by comments from two discussants:
· Prof Dunia P. Zongwe (Associate Professor in the Department of Legal Studies at Walter Sisulu University)
· Dr Caiphas B. Soyapi (Researcher and Senior Lecturer, North-West University)
About the author:
Dr Ndjodi Ndeunyema holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of Oxford, and was awarded the Dr Surya Subedi Prize for the best law doctoral thesis submitted at the Oxford Law Faculty in 2019-2020.
He also completed the MPhil in Law (Research), the BCL and the MSc Criminology and Criminal Justice, at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Dr Ndeunyema was a Modern Law Review Early Career Research Fellow at Oxford University in 2020-2021.
From 2017 to 2021, he served as Research Director at the Oxford Human Rights Hub and was a founding editor of the University of Oxford Human Rights Hub Journal. He was also an editor of the Oxford University Commonwealth Law Journal from 2016 to 2019.
About the book:
“Re-Invigorating Ubuntu Through Water” by Dr Ndjodi Ndeunyema (Pretoria University Law Press 2021) argues for the existence of a justiciable human right to water that is implied from the right to life in Article 6 of the Namibian Constitution.
The book builds this argument by using tools of constitutional interpretation and with the aid of comparative materials. In doing so, the African value of ubuntu is invoked. Ubuntu – which is legally developed through its four key principles of community, interdependence, dignity and solidarity – is anchored in a novel approach to Namibian constitutional interpretation that is conceptualised as ‘re-invigorative constitutionalism’.
The book further advances the ‘AQuA’ (adequacy – quality – accessibility) content of the right to water and articulates the correlative duties within the context of the respect – protect – fulfil trilogy, which are duties imposed upon the Namibian state as the primary duty bearer for a right to water. These duties include irreducible essential content duties that are argued to be immediate when compared to general obligations.
In giving substance to duties that flow from a right to water, international law interpretative resources are also relied upon, including General Comment No 15 by the United Nations Committee on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, the African Commission’s Principles and Guidelines on Social and Economic Rights, and the World Health Organisation’s Drinking-water Quality Guidelines.
Moreover, the book addresses various justiciability concerns that may arise, arguing that Namibian courts are institutionally competent and legitimate in enforcing right to water claims through the application of the bounded deliberation model.