🎧 PALcast Episode 20: Sindiso Mnisi Weeks and the Case for an Alter-Native Constitutionalism in South Africa

In Episode 20 of the PALcast, host Fabio de Sa e Silva speaks with Sindiso Mnisi Weeks, Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston and one of the most original voices in the field of constitutionalism and legal pluralism. In this compelling conversation, they explore what it means to imagine—and practice—an alter-nativeconstitutionalism grounded in the lived experiences and customary norms of South Africa’s rural communities.

Reimagining Law from Below

Drawing on her extensive fieldwork and lived knowledge of the South African context, Mnisi Weeks challenges dominant, top-down models of constitutional law. She advocates for a conception of constitutionalism that does not merely incorporate indigenous or customary law as a subordinate layer, but one that takes seriously the epistemologies and governance traditions of African communities as foundational in their own right.

Her approach disrupts the prevailing paradigm of constitutional supremacy inherited from colonial and post-colonial state-building. Instead, she calls for a model of legal co-existence and dialogical engagement, where customary authorities and state institutions engage in mutual accountability.

Law, Dignity, and the Rural Majority

Mnisi Weeks's insights are particularly timely as South Africa—and many other democracies—grapple with how to make legal systems more inclusive, legitimate, and responsive. In her analysis, constitutionalism cannot be detached from the socio-economic and historical contexts that define how people actually experience justice. Rural South Africans, often treated as peripheral, become central to this rethinking.

“We can’t afford to have a democratic project that doesn’t account for the lived realities of most people,” she argues. In this episode, listeners are invited to rethink the assumptions behind liberal legalism and to consider how constitutionalism might be reshaped from below.

Listen Now

▶️ Episode 20 – Sindiso Mnisi Weeks and the Case for an Alter-Native Constitutionalism in South Africa🎙️ Hosted by Fabio de Sa e Silva🔗 Click here to listen

PALcast is the official podcast of the Project on Autocratic Legalism (PAL). It brings together scholars from the Global South and North to discuss how law is used to entrench authoritarianism—and how it can be reclaimed for democracy and justice.

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