The nomos of white settler-colonialism in South Africa: An Afrikanist historical and philosophical analysis of conquest and law.

This paper provides a historical and legal philosophical analysis of the political and legal foundations of white settler colonialism in ‘South Africa’ since 1652, through the conceptual lens of the nomos as formulated by the legal philosopher Carl Schmitt. It relies on an Afrikan-centred theoretical framework and a historical comparative method in this qualitative study of the relationship between conquest and law. Literature review is used to analyse scholarship on law and conquest in South Africa. This paper seeks to close a gap in the narrow legalistic focus on the 1996 constitution, which excludes politics from the exclusion of politics in the current debate about white settler constitutionalism in relation to the land question. This paper’s contribution is the idea that the imposition of European law in Azania was preceded by the political act of violent land dispossession through a race war of conquest by European conquerors. This contribution seeks to respond to the following question: how can conquered indigenous people resolve the land question outside the constitution of 1996? This paper argues that land should be restored outside the constitution of 1996 through a physical war of reconquest/war of liberation by the indigenous people as a political act. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]