Prophecy and the Pandemic: The Vindication of Decolonial Legal Critical Scholarship

• Author: Ntando Sindane
• DOI: 10.25159/2522-6800/10144
• Published date: 01 June 2022
• Date: 01 June 2022
• Pages: 1-13

Commentary

Souther n African Public Law

https://d oi.org/10.25159/2522-6800/10144

https://u nisapressjournals.co.za/index.php/SAPL

ISSN 2522-6800 (Online)

#10144 | 13 pages

© Unisa Press 2022

Prophecy and the Pandemic: The Vindication of

Decolonial Legal Critical Scholarship

Ntando Sindane

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4752-8550

University of the Free State, Department of Private Law

SindaneNP@ufs.ac.za

Abstract

The ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic offers the legal academy a special

opportunity to ref lect on v arious conceptual, ideational, and ideological

questions that cleavage the academy and society. In this exposition, I embrace

an exegetical-cum-legalist enunciation to analyse the material conditions that

define the lives of the historically and presently colonised peoples of South

Africa. In the main, this treatise advances two arguments: (1) that the present

socio-economic conditions illustrate the decisive thrust of decolonial legal

critical scholarship and its ability to predict the future; and (2) that critical

approaches to the law constitute a legitimate intellectual prophetic engagement.

I conclude by insisting that decolonial legal critical scholarship should be the

cornerstone and a focal point of emphasis in the calls to shift [and decolonise]

all facets of the law and its curriculum.

Keywords: Prophecy; critical legal scholarship; decolonial theory; decolonisation;

global pandemic; legal education; LLB Curriculum