Making Dignity Supreme: The Namibian Supreme Court’s Dignity Jurisprudence Since Independence

Abstract

The right to human dignity has left a mark on development in Namibia, and this chapter measures the scale of this transformation by taking stock of the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence relating to that right since Independence. With wording partly inspired by international human rights texts, Article 8 of the Namibian Constitution makes the “dignity of all persons” “inviolable” and forbids cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

We review how the Supreme Court of Namibia applied and elevated human dignity in landmark cases from 1990 to date. We find that, although human dignity has framed constitutional interpretation in Namibia and constitutes one of the foundations of human rights philosophy, so far no judge and no scholar have ‘really defined’ human dignity in the country. As a consequence, they have unwittingly applied a Western conception at the detriment of African understandings of dignity.

From Ex parte: Attorney-General In Re: Corporal Punishment through Namunjebo to Gaingob – we critically assess the Supreme Court’s human dignity jurisprudence. And, in the final section of this chapter, we reflect on the overall trajectory of that case law and put forth suggestions on how the apex court can further build that jurisprudence going forward.