Author: L Lewis

JUDICIAL "TRANSLATION" AND CONTEXTUALISATION OF VALUES: RETHINKING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CUSTOMARY LAW IN MAYELANE

http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/pelj.v18i4.11 

2015 VOLUME 18 No 4

ISSN 1727-3781

JUDICIAL "TRANSLATION" AND CONTEXTUALISATION OF VALUES: RETHINKING THE DEVELOPMENT OF CUSTOMARY LAW IN MAYELANE
L Lewis
1 	Introduction
This article revisits the Constitutional Court case Mayelane v Ngwenyama to explore specific aspects of the intersection between customary law and constitutional norms. A particular point of friction between these regimes, brought to the fore by the Court, concerns the status of women. While rights law insists on the dignity and equality of all persons, customary law is frequently, and often without any relevant qualification, construed as being discriminatory in its treatment of women.
The South African Constitution has brought both positions into a normative "contact zone" by making customary law an applicable source of law in South Africa. Mayelane gives insight into how judges go about protecting the constitutional rights of women, while securing the "rightful place" of customary law "as one of the primary sources of law under the Constitution". Put differently, Mayelane is a prime example of the way in which judges grapple with normative and cultural pluralism.
Pluralism, in this context, refers to the intersection of multiple regulatory systems, which are distinct from one another. That is not to say, however, that individual normative and cultural orders are unitary and uncontested phenomena within themselves. Although the developments in Mayelane attest to this fact, the present discussion does not dwell on the internal conflicts and tensions existing within systems, but overtly on the variances between different systems.
In Mayelane the Court considers the question whether a particular relationship constituted a valid marriage according to customary law or not. The matter raised a number of important issues, many of which have been dealt with by various writers, while others might well deserve further attention. One such concerns the "development" of customary law in view of its status as a legal system within the domestic system, and the corresponding role of courts to secure its rightful place therein. The article considers one aspect in particular, namely the manner in which the Court ascribes meaning to norms and values that are deployed across the diverse cultural and normative contexts adhering to customary and constitutional law respectively. Therefore, under consideration is how the Court deals with the intersection of potentially conflicting constructions of norms found in such a plural setting. In Mayelane these norms concern the dignity and equality of women in polygynous marriages.
In this commentary the judicial task of managing multiple systems of regulation is likened to a process of "translation", in that it presupposes "a need to translate norms from one community to another". Proper translation is an important consideration when judges seek to fulfil constitutional mandates that could conflict, because it will affect "the persuasiveness of their judgment to both communities" having an interest in the outcome. With reference to the present case, the "communities" are, in broad terms, the (abstracted) national, as envisaged by the Constitution, and the subnational community of the Vatsonga. Hence, in Mayelane the Court has to "translate" the constitutional values of dignity and equality, with reference to women, in a way that will resonate with the adherents of customary law. If the translation is good, the judgment will be persuasive in its vindication of constitutional values and also of customary law.
2 	Facts and divergent approaches
In brief, the facts of the case are the following. The applicant, Ms Mayelane, had been validly married, according to customary law, to Mr Moyana, now deceased. The respondent, Ms Ngwenyama, claimed that she had also been validly married to Mr Moyana according to customary law. Under the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act 120 of 1998 (hereafter "the Act"), which recognises polygynous marriage, both women could have been validly married to the deceased. Ms Mayelane, however, disputes the validity of Ms Ngwenyama's marriage primarily on two grounds, which were raised in the High Court. The first is the contention that she, in her capacity as the first wife, had not been consulted about the second marriage as is customary in the Vatsonga community of which she and her deceased husband were members. The second reason is that the deceased had not complied with section 7(6) of the Act. In both the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, the issue of the first wife's consent was not addressed. Instead, both courts decided the matter on their respective, but opposing, interpretations of section 7(6) of the Act.
In an incisive about-turn, the Constitutional Court adopts a different approach and asks, first, whether the Supreme Court of Appeal should have determined the "consent issue", and second, whether the consent of the first wife is necessary for the validity of a subsequent marriage. The Court is of the opinion that the second question raises a constitutional matter and is an "important and pressing issue" because it "implicates the courts [sic] powers and obligations both to apply customary law and to promote the spirit, purport and objects of the Bill of Rights when developing customary law". The corollary to this dual obligation implies that the Court must confront any potential tension between customary law and the principles underlying the Constitution.
Since its inception, the South African Constitutional Court had been a steadfast defender of constitutional rights and values. At the same time, in line with constitutional guarantees, it blazed a trail in the recognition of customary law as an independent source of law. Thus, when applying it, the Court has affirmed the constitutional status of customary law, which "acknowledges the originality and distinctiveness" of customary law, and the fact that it "must be understood in its own terms and not through the lens of the common law". 
It is therefore not surprising that in Mayelane the Court determines that a process of ascertaining the customary marriage law of the Vatsonga is necessary. In this, it (untypically) becomes the court of first and last instance by directing that further representations be submitted to determine the content of the law, in order to establish whether the marriage between Mr Moyane and Ms Ngwenyama was valid under customary law. This approach is thus in direct contrast to those adopted in the High Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal, where the validity of the marriage – in terms of customary law – was not considered.
Yet, in the same breath as vindicating customary law, the Constitutional Court, here and as it had done in other cases, consistently emphasises the fact that such law is subject to the Constitution and must be interpreted accordingly. 
In Mayelane the Court therefore anticipates a situation of normative plurality that must be resolved, which is not an easy task. That being said, in a number of other cases the Court had opted for the relatively straightforward solution of choosing one set of norms over another, without attempting to resolve any fundamental conflict between them. Such an approach was followed, for example, in Bhe, where the Court invalidated certain rules of the customary law of succession which discriminated against women, and replaced them with existing statutory provisions. 
In Mayelane, on the other hand, the justices who concur in the main judgment are keenly aware that the Constitution also advances another jurisprudential approach, namely that of "developing" customary law in harmony with constitutional principles. 

3 	The "development" of customary law and the need for "translation" and contextualisation
The Court is of the opinion that, while it "must accord customary law the respect it deserves", it must likewise not "shy away from [its] obligation to develop it in accordance with the normative framework of the Constitution". It must be clear that the "development" of customary law (and presumably most other laws) does not mean that the agent, or court, simply chooses between two sets of norms and then replaces one with the other. Rather, as the Court states, the development of customary law implies a "process" that takes "the traditions of the community concerned" into consideration.
In casu, such a process signifies to the Court that it must first ascertain the content of the relevant customary law, and then determine whether and to what degree it diverges from constitutional norms and values, in order to "develop" it to be congruent with the latter. This type of approach followed by the Court, namely judging a matter with reference to an external, official standard, fits the description of "top down" adjudication, which, as explained below, could thwart the development process in fundamental ways.
Alternatively, the Court could engage in a different enquiry by adopting a "bottom up" and "holistic" perspective of the customary order, which would focus to a much greater degree on the customary context and its relevant audience. Such an approach would oblige the Court to "translate" constitutional principles to have meaning and relevance in that particular recipient context. I maintain that this approach is of utmost importance in cases where the Court is intent on "developing" customary law.
By analogy, one can think of what happens when the script for a play is translated from one language – which implies a different context – to another. For the play to have any relevance in the new context, translation requires a process of "interpretation", which results in "embedding the play in [a different] time and place". Judges, as translators, therefore need to understand the idiom of the new "language" into which it is translated – but this is not all that is required.
While translators must obviously have a degree of knowledge of the recipient audience and context, they also have to give sufficient consideration to the language and background of the source, otherwise the "story", when translated, will be unintelligible. To complete the loop of the translation in Mayelane, it is therefore important first to ask from which script the constitutional principles come, and what is meant by "dignity" and "equality" in the constitutional sense. Only after establishing these details can the judge translate the essence of the original narrative and make it accessible to a new audience. Both sides of the account must be rendered before the Court will be able to "develop" customary law in a meaningful way and according to the "spirit, purport and objectives" of the Constitution.
Translation, in the manner described above, is consequently closely allied to and presupposes a process of "contextualisation", a term which refers to the adaptation of concepts or, equally, of norms and values that are transferred from one context to another. And because norms, and particularly their associated values, reflect the context or "world" from which they come, "what finds expression in one [context] may have no counterpart or resonance in another". Accordingly, the discussion next focuses on the context from which constitutional values spring, and thereafter on that of customary law.
3.1 	The sources and context of constitutional values 
It is no secret that the principles underlying most constitutional bills of rights did not miraculously embed themselves in domestic constitutions. The prevalence worldwide of the direct and indirect borrowing of constitutional norms has resulted in a great "horizontal approximation" of national constitutions. Much convergence has also been brought about by states being "independently influenced by a set of legal principles coming from above and beyond any of them". When states readily adopt international norms in this way, constitutions become "globalised in form and substance".
This means that many bills of rights contain almost nothing new, and are instead constructed from "old imported bricks". They overtly echo international human rights law to the point where domestic and international provisions are almost indistinguishable in their wording and, importantly, in their meaning. The so-called constitutional "context" is therefore not merely a national context, but to a large degree an international one. For this reason, judgments such as Mayelane that deal with the intersection of constitutional law and customary law represent in fact a confluence of international, national and, with reference to the latter, subnational interests.
Since the human rights script which underpins most bills of rights, including the South African, is rooted in the ideological context of international law, it follows that the values contained in the Bill are not neutral but reflect the western-centric character of international law. Thus, viewed from the perspective of a subnational, customary law context, these values could well appear to be from a foreign script. Any such foreignness cannot simply be brushed over, but requires conscious judicial translation and contextualisation of the relevant norms and values in order to "legitimate" and imbue them with meaning in another context.
3.2 	Making constitutional values accessible in a customary law context
Certain consequences flow from the argument that constitutional values are scripted according to a shared international rights paradigm, and that they must therefore be particularised in other contexts. First, such a reading points to a disavowal of the universality of these values (and of the universality of human rights norms in general). A second consequence is that it becomes "[i]mperative to rethink the hagiography of universal norms, including human rights norms, in the realisation that ultimately all laws and values are relative and culture specific".
An acknowledgement of the non-universal, relative nature of constitutional norms and values leads us straight back to the need for translation and contextualisation, and prompts further questions about the nature and logistics of this process. It also highlights why the "legitimacy" of norms which are transferred from one normative world to another is at stake: if the intended recipients of certain norms do not view them as legitimate, those norms will lack bindingness in the particular context, and the audience will simply not "hear" them.
While it is all very well for judges (and writers) to call attention to the importance of "context", the proper translation from one normative language into another "necessarily involves art and invention". This is due to the polycentric structure of normative systems, each having "its own macro-context, the social and physical environment in which it is to operate". Determining the content of and the interplay between the relevant contexts therefore becomes central to making constitutional values accessible.
It follows that, when judges contextualise constitutional values within a customary law framework, they cannot rely exclusively on perceived similarities. Above all, they have to be conscious of the normative and cultural differences between the constitutional and the customary orders. Without clearly identifying and understanding these differences, it is difficult to fathom how a court will be able to "develop" customary (or any other) legal system. Hence, a "deliberative process" is required wherein judges engage fully with the content of customary law. And as noted, such deliberation must therefore take cognisance of "the material conditions that shape people's lives".
The difficulty with respect to the contextual approach is, of course, that of establishing the content of the relevant context(s), a problem that is exacerbated in the case of an uncodified, "living" system such as customary law. In addition, it must be remembered that all cultures and contexts are permeable and fluid. In the same way that languages change over time, contexts change, and judges have to consider the currency of the normative "language" they use. They cannot, for example, rely on an archaic version that the audience will find unintelligible. In terms of customary law, this means that courts – as the Court sought to do in Mayelane – must apply the "living" customary law and not an official, essentialised, and potentially outdated, version thereof.
In summary, it is argued that the abovementioned factors should inform the manner in which the Court applies constitutional values within the customary law context pertaining to Mayelane. It is also argued that the Court has a duty to translate and particularise these values, instead of merely transplanting them, top down, on the assumption that they have the same content in both systems. This task entails the interrogation of the context and the sources of constitutional law, as well as those of the relevant customary law. By translating any potential "foreignness" of the constitutional values the Court will be able to ensure their legitimacy in the eyes of the intended recipients. How the Court actually approaches the matter is analysed next.

3.3 	The Constitutional Court and the "untapped richness in customary law"
As previously noted, in its determination of the matter, the Constitutional Court rejects positivistic reliance on section 7(6) of the Recognition of Customary Marriages Act. With reference to the resolution of the present matter, it sets out to vindicate the important role of customary law as a "primary" source of law. In so doing, the Court relies on the requirements in section 3(1)(b) of the Act for the validity of a customary marriage, which determine that it "must be negotiated and entered into or celebrated in accordance with customary law". For these and other reasons the Court concludes that the relevance of the customary law regarding the consent of the first wife did not depend on whether it was raised in cross-appeal in the court a quo. Hence, of its own accord the Court pursues the question of the content of the relevant customary law.
Moreover, the Court is mindful of the fact that "customary law" means the "living" law. The Court acknowledges the difficulty of ascertaining such living law and of meeting the apparently contradictory requirements for the application of customary law, namely flexibility and certainty. In order to fulfil its obligations, the Court calls for the submission of further evidence to ascertain the content of the law.
The submissions thus produced are not uniform. The Court is nevertheless unperturbed by the numerous discrepancies, which it describes as "nuances and perspectives that are often missed or ignored when viewed from a common-law perspective". After studying the evidence, the court concludes that:
... customary law must be developed, to the extent that it does not yet do so, to include a requirement that the consent of the first wife is necessary for the validity of a subsequent customary marriage.
While the Court takes seriously its mandate to develop customary law, can it do this in a vacuum, and does it manage to tap into the "richness" of its underlying values?
3.4 	Dignity and equality - untranslated
Central to the argument in the High Court, the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court is the need to ensure the equality and dignity of women in the course of promoting the spirit of the Constitution. It is remarkable, however, that the justices do not analyse these concepts in detail, and describe only in broad terms what various judicial interpretations of dignity and equality are. In the Supreme Court this is done predominantly with reference to Constitutional Court jurisprudence. For example, quoting from Gumede the court determines that the "Recognition Act is inspired by the dignity and equality rights that the Constitution entrenches and the normative value systems it establishes". This approach, which simultaneously relies on and reinforces the idea that dignity and equality must be construed in terms of the Constitution, thus situates the meaning of these values within that particular context. As seen above, however, the constitutional context is neither neutral nor universal. Instead, it is "tightly coupled" to the international human rights law paradigm, which instantiates a particular rights script based on (liberal) individualism. The court confirms this link in the next part of the quotation therein that the constitutional value system envisaged by the Act "is also necessitated by our country's international treaty obligations".
In Mayelane in the Constitutional Court, dignity is given an equally pivotal role. In reliance on other judgments, the Court establishes that "dignity is not merely a value, but a 'justiciable and enforceable right'". Paradoxically, despite the fact that the Court is intent on valorising customary law and that the given context concerns customary marriage and the customary norms regulating it, dignity is construed purely in terms of the orthodox rights ideology. This means that the Court interprets human dignity as being synonymous with "[a]utonomy and control over one's personal circumstances". In casu it is also noteworthy that, to a marked degree, dignity and equality are defined in the negative, hence not with reference to what they are within a customary context. Thus, for example, there would be an infringement of a wife's rights to dignity and equality if she were "unable to consider or protect her position" or "cannot take an informed decision".
It can be concluded that neither the Constitutional Court nor the Supreme Court (or for that matter the High Court) reflects on what these concepts mean for the parties themselves in the context of their lived realities. The courts do not consider the extent to which dignity and equality are context-specific, nor do they investigate the possibility of finer shades of meaning or outright divergences. Rather, in Mayelane these concepts are deployed by the Court as abstracted versions of the mainstream dialogue. They are not in any way "translated" into the cultural language or context applicable to the Vatsonga. It is unlikely that such decontextualised values can serve as a proper basis for the development of customary law.
As the present matter shows, dignity and equality are difficult to describe in non-relational terms. Hence, the result is that there are competing arguments in the range of judgments about whose dignity is at stake. In the High Court the dignity of the first wife is paramount. In the Supreme Court of Appeal the dignity and equality of the second wife vis-à-vis the first become the focus. In the Constitutional Court, albeit on separate grounds, the dignity and equality of the first wife are central to judgment. The overall effect is one of disjuncture in the approaches adopted by the different courts, as well as in the conclusions reached by them – resulting in a plethora of unintended consequences. Similarly, although not dissenting, the separate judgments in the Constitutional Court are in fundamental ways at variance with the reasoning in the main judgment. It appears as though the actual audience has been forgotten in these renditions of the dignity-and-equality script.
4 	The customary law context
In line with its existing jurisprudence, the Constitutional Court in Mayelane presents itself as a steadfast champion of customary law, at the same time it also displays certain ideological preferences.
As described above, the Court orientates itself according to the liberal, individualistic ideology upon which the human rights regime is founded, one that tends to trivialise the relationship between the individual and his or her community. Customary law, on the other hand, is overtly group centred, and ideologically aligns itself to the notion of the "duty of individuals to find their place in the order of the entire society". This sense of group solidarity is clearly reflected in the important role ascribed to the greater family in matrimonial matters.
Under customary law, marriage is not only about the union of the spouses in their individual capacity; rather, it signifies a relationship between two families, which fact the Court also records. The group/family focus is clearly manifest in both the existing and the new evidence led in the Court. Time and again, the crucial role played by the family in the decision-making process is highlighted. Not only is the family actively involved in the marriage negotiations and in seeking the consent of the wife (if withheld), but also the very decision for a man to enter into a subsequent marriage could come from his family. The family is unmistakably an integral part of the legal underpinnings of marriage, and respect for the view of family members is no mere social nicety.
Nevertheless, in the process of ascertaining the content of the customary law of the Vatsonga, the Court does not reflect on the position of the family in the matter, despite the fact that it has a definite and direct bearing on the validity of the second marriage. Instead, the Court's approach, by reproducing the individualistic sub-structure of the Act, strongly endorses international rights law and in its wake the "egotism" of western "social atomism".
For the simple reason that customary law configures rights from a different perspective, the Court cannot facilely transpose mainstream ideas about dignity and equality onto the customary system. As it appears from the evidence in Mayelane, the status and dignity of a wife in a customary marriage is to a large extent contingent on the views and participation of the family. Thus, for example, "the second woman will be regarded as a concubine if the husband's relatives do not support the husband". If this is so, a judicial pronouncement on what constitutes her dignity could in fact be quite meaningless. In the context of a wife's lived reality, it appears that lack of recognition by the family will most certainly affect her status, and consequently her sense of dignity and equality within the community.
The point is that the deep-seated gender identity and social structures, as reflected in the customary system, cannot hastily be rewritten in a judgment, since they are most resistant to change. They are furthermore linked to values, such as dignity, which are particularly context-specific.
The vindication of rights is without a doubt a primary consideration that animates the judgment in Mayelane. Yet it must be remembered that "[p]art of the reason for the failure … to respect human rights lies in the seemingly alien character of that corpus". Every South African court, which takes seriously its dual mandate to promote on one hand the values underlying the Bill of Rights, and on the other to recognise and develop customary law, is therefore obliged to particularise those values in such a way that they will resonate with the given customary context in order to be accepted by participants.
Nevertheless, in all three courts there had not been any translation of the concepts dignity and equality from the mainstream script to that of the customary. The result of the failure of the courts to establish a link between these values and their relevant context is evident in the abovementioned tangle of divergent judgments, wherein the dignity and equality of wives in polygynous marriages were abstracted according to imported values – and according to what each judge understood these values to be.
5 	Two scripts: implications and the role of the Court 
According to the analysis above, there are at least two different ways of construing the dignity and equality of wives in customary marriages. As will be explained below, their boundaries are not necessarily watertight, yet in broad strokes one construction is rooted in the liberal, individualistic ideology of the international and constitutional rights regime, while the other emphasises communalism and the importance of the extended family.
In Mayelane, the abundant evidence about the part played by the family in validating the existence of a customary marriage is not taken into consideration. Although it has gone to great lengths to hear evidence in order to "ascertain" the applicable customary law, the Court is narrowly concerned with whether or not the consent of the first wife is necessary for the validity of the marriage, when other customary norms clearly also have a bearing on its legality.
In its defence, however, it could perhaps be argued that the Court was correct in limiting its enquiry to the consent question, since it was pleaded in the High Court by Ms Mayelane, while other customary rules and requirements were merely alluded to. As it is, the Court had taken a bold step in deciding the consent issue, which had not been raised in cross-appeal in the Supreme Court of Appeal, as well as by its ascertainment of the living customary law, and its subsequent development thereof.
On the other hand, the Court strongly emphasises that "a court is obliged to satisfy itself, as a matter of law, on the content of customary law". Furthermore, it determines that:
It is incumbent on our courts to take steps to satisfy themselves as to the content of customary law and, where necessary to evaluate local custom in order to ascertain the content of the relevant legal rule.
This reasoning corresponds to the analysis in Shilubana, to which the Court refers with approval, namely that the "process" of determination must be informed, inter alia, by a "consideration of the traditions of the community concerned". In addition, the Court makes frequent reference to "living" customary law as a "system", which implies that its rules do not operate in isolation. It also recognises the fact that customary law may "impose validity requirements in addition to those set out in [the Act]".
By focusing only on the consent of the first wife, the Court neglects these additional validity requirements, notably those relating to the family. They are overlooked, despite being linked by the Court itself to the fact that "in pre-colonial times, 'marriage was always a bond between families and not between individual spouses'", and that presently the values of customary law:
... provide a setting which contributes to the unity of family structures and the fostering of co-operation, a sense of responsibility and belonging in its members, as well as nurturing communitarian traditions like ubuntu.
It can be inferred that the approach actually followed by the Court is the result of its preoccupation with individual rights and autonomy described above. It must therefore also be an approach that will skew the "ascertainment" of customary law and thus its proposed development, which presumably depends on the proper acknowledgement of its content. Furthermore, the Court does not follow its own logic, which prescribes that it must determine the "living content" of customary law and not only selected portions thereof. Equally, the Court cautions that customary law must not be viewed "through the prism of legal conceptions foreign to it", and must be treated with the "deference and dignity it deserves". Yet, the Court side-steps these very requirements and therefore fails to translate and contextualise dignity and equality appropriately.
5.1	Should the Court translate constitutional values at all?
The tough task the Court has set itself of ascertaining and developing the living customary law is further complicated by the overriding requirement that such law must reflect "the rights and values of the Constitution from which it draws its legal force". The question is therefore whether the group-orientated underpinnings of dignity and equality in the customary system are in any way compatible with their construal in the constitutional context.
In the South African context, constitutional values are not of the static, textbook type. Dignity and equality are aspirational ideals associated with transformation and restorative justice, which the Constitutional Court has vigorously endorsed in a general sense, and in particular with respect to the rights of women. Hence, as some of the abovementioned cases showed, oppressive customary norms which infringe upon the dignity of women have not withstood the scrutiny of the Court. One could thus reflect on whether any construction that might diminish the rights of women would or should fall foul of the Court's insistence on the need for transformation.
It is therefore important to consider whether the involvement of the family (and/or the community in general) and its views on the validity of marriages would detract from the dignity and equality of either Ms Ngwenyama or Ms Mayelane. In Mabena v Letsoalo for example, the fact that the father of an adult man had not consented to his marriage and was not involved in the lobolo negotiations did not affect the validity of the marriage. The High Court held that not only did this determination reflect the living customary law, but also that such development of the customary law was congruent with the objects, spirit and purport of the Bill of Rights. Is it therefore in the interests of transformative justice that the Court should restrict rather than endorse the role of the family in the present matter?
Ironically, the Court itself creates another hurdle that militates against the construal of dignity and equality within a customary context. It concerns the question of who gives evidence about the content of the law. In Mayelane the Court anomalously places conspicuous reliance on the opinion of male traditional leaders. For courts to protect the dignity and equality of women by means of the development of customary law, it is necessary however that they discern clearly whether the script upon which its ascertainment relies is not a contested version that merely favours and reinforces oppressive power structures.
One could therefore ask whether these apparent obstacles are reason enough to obviate the operation of certain customary values within a framework of transformational jurisprudence.
5.2 	Inherent tensions in the context-specific development of customary law
Drawing a sharp distinction for example between liberal individualism and communalism is certainly an option available to courts, and one that avoids negotiating the vicissitudes of normative conflict between constitutional and customary systems of rights. But as Himonga et al  argue, such a choice is too "simplistic", because "it is unclear that liberalism and communitarianism necessarily conflict". It is, according to them, a "false dichotomy".
Santos goes further, saying that "rather than cannibalizing each other", individual and collective rights can in fact "strengthen each other". Thus, he propounds a "virtuous hybridization among the most comprehensive and emancipatory conceptions of human dignity" found in both the "human rights tradition" and in "other traditions".
The idea that individual rights and communalism interlock makes good sense. Although under the Constitution we are predominantly individual right bearers, we are nevertheless, as recognised by the Court, "not islands unto ourselves". This proposition is, after all, also implicit in the Court's claim of simultaneously vindicating constitutional values and customary law, which claim in theory embraces both positions. Such a dual mandate would be impossible if these systems were utterly oppositional.
It was thus incumbent upon the Court to take due notice of the customary context, and not to entrench the "false dichotomy" between the constitutional and customary value systems. It is thus argued that the role of the family in the customary law of marriage should have been brought to bear on the validity of the marriage as a matter of customary law and, most importantly, in relation to the development of customary law in construing the dignity of both wives. This contention, however, immediately raises those prickly, age-old questions about discrimination so often associated with customary law and its patriarchal power structures.
5.3 	Contextual scripts of dignity and identity 
Dignity cannot easily be severed from a person's self-understanding and identity, which are in many respects "socially constructed". In reality, human beings do not have a single, monolithic identity, but several individual and collective identities, which continuously overlap. Because these identities are embedded in their relevant socio-cultural contexts, and because people move between them, both identities and contexts are not "bounded", but are fluid and dynamic. Thus, the individualism-versus-communalism debate is not about binary opposites but about degrees of emphasis. Both types of identity are important and both matter to people to varying degrees, depending on the given context.
Therefore, one could not say that bringing the family into matrimonial affairs or even making the validity of a marriage dependent on the participation of the family is in itself an outright affront to a wife's dignity. From an "internal" perspective, much will depend on the importance that the wife attaches to her group identity and the value she attaches to her status within and solidarity with the community, and further, how this understanding intersects with her individual identity.
On the other hand, if the dignity of women was contingent solely on potentially oppressive norms or practices, even if women themselves regarded them as acceptable or important, grave injustices would continue to be perpetuated in the name of culture or custom. A court intent on securing the dignity of women through transformational jurisprudence cannot allow customary norms that could hinder such processes to remain completely "open-ended" in the name of cultural association or collective identities. Thus, the issue of identity is relevant to the apparent "dichotomy" between the constitutional and customary worldviews pertaining to Mayelane.
If the Court therefore wants to instil the necessary respect for customary law, it must fully address – and not ignore – the power of the family (or the community) to dictate in certain matrimonial matters, while ensuring that this fact does not infringe the dignity of women in relation to both their individual and their collective identities. De Sousa Santos provides helpful insights into the tensions between cultures based predominantly on individualism on the one hand, and communalism on the other by explaining that all cultures are "reciprocally incomplete". Thus, (the culture) of human rights, which focusses on "derivative" rights, "rather than on … the duty of individuals to find their place in the order of the entire society", is incomplete. Conversely, a system that has a:
... strong undialectical bias in favour of harmony … neglects the fact that, without primordial [fundamental] rights, the individual is too fragile an entity to avoid being run over by whatever transcends him or her. 
De Sousa Santos's thesis thus provides another reason why the Court erred in Mayelane by neglecting the communitarian customary context. This is because it traded one incomplete regime for another, when a more meaningful "completion" of rights could be achieved by considering "the most comprehensive and emancipatory conceptions of human dignity" found in both systems.
5.4 	The Court as "virtuous" translator
Elevating one context and the value system it represents over another thwarts the idea of creating a "virtuous hybridization" between different constructions of dignity. In Mayelane this approach meant that the Court reduced both the customary and constitutional contexts to "bounded" entities, thereby missing an opportunity to investigate how dignity is shaped by the porosity and coalescence of the individual and collective identities of women as respectively mirrored by these systems. Yet it is vital that the Court "unbinds" and links these contexts.
Returning to the original metaphor and previous sections, the Court as translator of norms and values must take the contexts of both the original script and of the translation into account. If this process is successfully carried out, the narrative in the former will retain its integrity, yet it will be sufficiently particularised to make sense in a new context. The result will be a "virtuous" hybridisation or translation, wherein the original message is not lost nor rejected by the listeners, because they will understand its meaning relative to their own realities.
A perplexing question is clearly that of how any court can accomplish the task of integrating different values. Although the details of the problem fall squarely within the domain of courts themselves, a few tentative observations can be made.
The first is that courts regularly wrestle with conflicting norms and values, their meaning and construction – no matter where they originate. The resolution of competing interests animates constitutional and transformational jurisprudence, and it is something that the South African Constitutional Court is particularly adept at doing. As reflected in many of its judgments, the Court by carefully weighing different interests has been able to challenge and reject an array of oppressive and discriminatory norms. Hence, the jurisprudential logic found in Makwanyane for example, which allowed the Court to mediate between greatly divergent exigencies and thereby find the "golden thread" in constitutional and customary value systems, can be applied in all cases calling for such mediation.
This logic goes hand-in-hand with the methodology adopted by the Court, which relies on a number of important jurisprudential "tools", notably those of balancing and proportionality. The associated principles, which are concerned with determining the relative or proportional weight of competing interests, are particularly useful for the resolution of conflict between norms. They can similarly be applied in the balancing of potentially conflicting regimes, or even the Court's own competing mandates, such as those represented in Mayelane. These tools are also highly compatible with, and indeed, presuppose the processes of contextualisation and translation described above.
Translating and contextualising the constitutional dignity script would, as explained above, require the Court to take seriously the place of the family, and if necessary that of the community, in the construal of a wife's dignity and equality. However, what it does not mean is that that factor should be afforded disproportionate weight. Instead, balancing and proportionality means that a court, in this situation, will consider dignity and equality from both an individual and a collective perspective and evaluate each one within the framework of its mandate. This exercise is not one that relies on monocultural preferences.
Elements of the proportionality test are described by Albertyn in what is called the "Harksen test". According to her, the test:
... entails a contextual assessment of the impact of an impugned rule or conduct with due regard to the degree of disadvantage suffered by the complainant and his or her group, the purpose of the act/conduct and the extent to which the complainant's rights and interests are invaded. These factors are weighed up within an overall assessment of the impairment of human dignity, generally defined as a failure to be treated with equal concern and respect.
All these considerations would have benefitted the Court greatly in being a "virtuous" translator. They would first have aided the Court in assessing the overall context in detail, which means both the customary and the constitutional context. This in turn would have allowed the Court to consider the impact of all the relevant (although not necessarily impugned) norms on those who are affected by them, and the manner in which they are thus affected. Lastly the Court would be in position to weigh up and balance all the relevant factors and interests. In terms of Mayelane, such proportionate balancing would imply placing the different constructions of dignity and equality on the scale, in order to produce a translation of constitutional values that acknowledges and respects their new context and audience.
6 	Conclusion
By analogy with Mabena, the Court may well have concluded – after a "deliberative" proportionality enquiry – that allowing the family to have the power to determine the validity of a marriage will allow it to have too much power over the destiny of the women concerned. Or it may find that on balance a woman's individual identity and rights in a particular instance outweigh those that are construed collectively. There is, however, a salient difference between this scenario and the one in Mayelane where the Court neglected such inquiry altogether.
Had it been more conscious of the customary context, the Court would have substantiated its claim of respecting customary law as an independent source of law to a much greater extent. It would have been in a better position to deliberate the development of customary law if the varied interests represented in Mayelane were ascribed their proportionate weight and properly balanced. Even if the eventual outcome had been the same, such a judgment would have set a sound precedent for the need to contextualise and translate constitutional values in other socio-cultural contexts. Not only would their proper translation indicate respect for other cultures, but it could be a step towards finding cultural "common ground" among "the most comprehensive and emancipatory conceptions of human dignity" found in both constitutional and customary systems.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CCR	Constitutional Court Review	
Harv L Rev	Harvard Law Review	
IJL&F	International Journal of Law and the Family	
LJIL	Leiden Journal of International Law	
McGill LJ	McGill Law Journal	
MJECL	Maastricht Journal of European and Comparative Law	
MLR	Modern Law Review	
NYU J Int'l Law & Pol	New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 	
PER	Potchefstroom Elektorniese Regstydskrif / Potchefstroom Electronic Law Journal	
SUBB Jurisprudentia	Jurisprudentia Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Iurisprudentia	
THRHR	Tydskrif vir Hedendaagse Romeins-Hollandse Reg	
Va J Int'l L	Virginia Journal of International Law