Rossouw, Johann2016-06-212016-06-212014Rossouw, J. (2014). Ubuntu between tradition and modernity: on A report on Ubuntu by Leonard Praeg. Acta Academica: Special issue: social theory, human rights and philosophy, 46(4), 70-92.0587-2405 (print)2415-0479 (online)http://hdl.handle.net/11660/3147In Part 1, I overview Praeg’s points of departure, namely critical humanism, the openness of the norms of justice, the importance of potential, his conception of modernity, a violent ontology, and the state as locus of politics. The remainder of Part 1 concerns the main arguments of his five chapters. These are the shifting meaning of Ubuntu in precolonial, colonial and postcolonial Africa; Nyerere’s ujamaa experiment in Tanzania as a case study of the dangers inherent in ignoring the colonial disruption Ubuntu; the myth of the complete break with the past allegedly represented by post-apartheid South Africa, and how the latter is haunted by Ubuntu, and Praeg’s concluding link between text worker or construction worker and Ubuntu. In part 2, I critically discuss Praeg’s account of modernity and his dualistic distinction between South African Africans and Afrikaners that need to be set aside to decolonise South Africa.enUbuntuPraeg, LeonhardCritical humanismPost-apartheid South AfricaArticleUniversity of the Free State