The Right to Say No to Imposed Development: Human Rights Vernacularization in Reverse in South Africa

Abstract In this paper I contribute to critical literature on human rights practice by emphasizing how communities in South Africa leverage emerging transnational human rights norms to make progressive claims to property based on a revitalized customary law. I show the extent to which international Indigenous and peasant peoples’ rights are an important interpretive resource in contemporary struggles against the powers of autocratic traditional leaders and extractive industry. In an effort to emphasize the agency of rural communities, I develop a conceptual framework examining ‘law from below’ and the importance of studying ‘property in the margins’. I demonstrate that the use of Indigenous rights norms in South African litigation and social struggle is a process of human rights vernacularization in reverse whereby norms are developed locally through struggle and deliberation and translated into legal venues, effecting shifts in human rights norms and practice.