Re-theorising and re-conceptualising land, sovereignty, socio-economic rights and responsibility in the context of pan-Africanism and African renaissance in the 21st century

Abstract

Land, which in a broader understanding is the Earth within the Universe, is grossly under-conceptualised and under-theorised in the prevailing mainstream or dominant paradigms under capitalism, imperialism and neo-colonialism. Land is often subsumed in the generic concept of property, thus making it a mere commodity in market economies or market economic thinking. In African epistemology land means much, much more: land is the basis of all life on earth and there can be no life, human life included, that can be detached from land. Epistemological terms such as ‘Mother Land’, ‘Mother Earth’, ‘Mother Africa’, ‘Holy Land’, ‘Promised Land’, ‘Daughter/Son of the Soil’, etc., express the centrality of land for people all over the world. Land is not only the material and spiritual basis of life for individual human beings but is also an essential component of the means of social production and reproduction, and statehood. Because of this, it stands to reason that in re-conceptualising and...