Duty to human needs from African rights

Abstract

This final chapter argues that the determination of public duties to our needs in African politics ought to be based on established social and political rights derived from recognised African customary norms. The argument is motivated by a basic limitation with two opposed approaches to African political theory of needs-realist and communitarian-which struggle with the naturalistic fallacy in determining objective public needs, since they dismiss the security of rights-based law as the basis for the legitimate determination of public duties towards human needs by the state. On the basis of a critique of these two views, it is argued that duties to needs are not an alternative or substitute to rights, but, on the contrary, human rights legitimate public duties to needs, and African human needs are best served by rights interpreted through recognised African customary practices.