2021 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 3(1) and its rights could only be achieved through the values of solidarity, respect, and compassion for others. 70 There have been different interpretations to Ubuntu, ranging from the official legal and policy positions to those which are highly personal, and scholarly interpretations. Dirk Louw, for instance holds that Ubuntu serves as the spiritual foundation of many African communities and cultures. 71 John Hailey, on the other hand, argues that Ubuntu is not just a philosophical construct but also a practical demonstration of the core values of the African communal life. 72 He posits that Ubuntu has a role in valorising individual identity within the community. It promotes community building and collective work. It also promotes traditional conflict management through consensus-building and mediation, and it supports organisational management and effectiveness. 73 Jacob Mugumbate and Andrew Nyanguru argue that Ubuntu could mean sympathy, compassion, benevolence, solidarity, hospitality, generosity, sharing, openness, affirming, available, kindness, caring, harmony, interdependence, obedience, collectivity and consensus. 74 The African concept of Ubuntu is significant to this study because it focuses on the rights of the community over those of the individual. It implies for instance, that when a community is deprived of its rights to nationality, the individual of that community cannot enjoy such a right to nationality. As stated by Ingange-wa-Ingange: The African human rights system forcefully took up the adage ‘I am because we are’ and argued that it was meaningless in the African context to adopt the notion of the autonomised individual divorced from his or her social community. 75 MANIFESTATION OF COLLECTIVE PEOPLES’ RIGHTS IN AFRICAN CASE LAW The decisions by the various human rights’ interpretative bodies in the continent such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights, the Committee of the African Charter for the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the African Court of Justice have led to an emergence of a distinct African case law on peoples’ and community rights. The Commission’s position on peoples’ rights with regard to self-determination enshrined in art 20 of the Charter has been evolving over time and according to specific cases. In 1981, when the Charter was adopted, peoples’ right to self-determination referred to African people under colonial and apartheid white-dominated regimes, especially those fighting peoples’ liberation wars. The Commission made a conceptual shift in its definition of the rights of peoples to self-determination in its 1992 landmark Katangese Peoples’ Congress v Zaïre 70 71 72 73 74 75 See more at Dirk J Louw, ‘Ubuntu: An African Assessment of the Religious Other’ (Conference Paper, 20th World Congress of Philosophy 1998) <https://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Afri/AfriLouw.htm> ibid. John Hailey, ���Ubuntu: A Literature Review’ (Research Paper, The Tutu Foundation 2008) 7 <https://web.archive.org/web/20150319084943/http://www.tutufoundationuk.org:80/docum ents/UbuntuLiteratureReview_JH_Dec08.pdf>. ibid 13–18. Jacob Mugumbate and Andrew Nyanguru, ‘Exploring African Philosophy: The Value of Ubuntu in Social Work’ (2013) 3(1) African Journal of Social Work 82, 85. Ingange-wa-Ingange (n 13) 220. 46