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A little catch-up on Paris, new glasses, Grease, the start of a new academic year, and the power of storytelling and meaning-making in our own lives.

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Email: drzoechitare@gmail.com

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Episode 2: Citizen, Subject and Partial Legal Subjectivity

In this episode of Language for Living, I explore Mahmood Mamdani’s Citizen and Subject alongside Oliver Phillips’ concept of partial legal subjectivity.

We look at how colonial law did more than distribute rights unequally — it created different kinds of legal and political subjects. From the distinction between citizen and subject, to the gendered operation of customary law, I ask what it means to be recognised by law, but only partially.

I also connect these ideas to my own research on rural women, land, customary authority and constitutionalism in South Africa, and consider why formal equality does not necessarily produce substantive legal agency.

At the heart of the episode is a simple question:

What happens when you are formally included, but the institution still only recognises part of you?

In this episode

• Legal subjectivity and what it means to be recognised as a legal person
• Mahmood Mamdani’s distinction between the citizen and the subject
• Colonial indirect rule and customary authority
• Oliver Phillips and the concept of partial legal subjectivity
• Gender, customary law and unequal legal agency
• The gap between formal citizenship and substantive power
• Rural women, land and constitutionalism in South Africa

Further reading 📚

• John L. Comaroff, ‘The Discourse of Rights in Colonial South Africa: Subjectivity, Sovereignty, Modernity’ in Austin Sarat and Thomas R. Kearns (eds), Identities, Politics, and Rights (University of Michigan Press 1995) 193–236.
• Oliver Phillips, ‘Constituting the Global Gay: Issues of Individual Subjectivity and Sexuality in Southern Africa’ in Carl Stychin and Didi Herman (eds), Sexuality in the Legal Arena (Athlone Press 2000) 17–34.
• Oliver Phillips, ‘(Dis)Continuities of Custom in Zimbabwe and South Africa: The Implications for Gendered and Sexual Rights’ (2004) 7(2) Health and Human Rights 82–113.
• Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton University Press 1996).

Language for Living with Dr Zoe Chitare gives language to the invisible rules, structures and ideas that shape our everyday lives.

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Why do we so often measure our worth through other people’s approval?

In the first full episode of Language for Living, I explore what happens when we outsource our value to qualifications, relationships, achievements, or public recognition—and why this leaves us vulnerable to losing ourselves.

This podcast isn’t about telling you what to think. It’s about giving you the concepts, language, and tools to think more clearly about your own life and the world around you.

If you’ve ever felt that something shaped your experience but couldn’t quite put it into words, this podcast is for you.

In this episode:

* Why we outsource value

* Intrinsic vs. extrinsic worth

* The language we use to understand ourselves

* Why concepts can change the way we see the world

* What to expect from Language for Living

🌱 Language for Living with Dr. Zoe Chitare brings socio-legal, philosophical, and social ideas out of academia and into everyday life; giving language to lived experience.

If you enjoyed this episode, consider subscribing and sharing it with someone who might find it helpful.

For collaboration and conversation: drzoechitare@gmail.com

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What if the hardest part of an experience isn’t living through it but not having the words to describe it? Join Dr. Zoe Chitare as she explores law, society, identity, power and everyday life, and follow the show so you never miss an episode.

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What happens after a right is written into a constitution?

In this episode of Language for Living, I return to a question that sat at the heart of my doctoral research: why can a progressive constitutional commitment exist on paper without being fully realised in everyday life?

At the heart of the episode is a simple distinction:

Recognition is not the same thing as realisation.

Rights matter. But rights also need institutions, implementation, resources, enforcement — and people with enough power to actually use them.

Further reading 📚

Department of Rural Development and Land Reform, Land Audit Report: Phase II — Private Land Ownership by Race, Gender and Nationality (2017).

High Level Panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and the Acceleration of Fundamental Change, Report of the High Level Panel (Parliament of the Republic of South Africa 2017).

Michael Clark and Nolundi Luwaya, Communal Land Tenure 1994–2017 (Land and Accountability Research Centre, commissioned report for the High Level Panel, 2017).

Aninka Claassens, ‘Recent Changes in Women’s Land Rights and Contested Customary Law in South Africa’ (2013) 13(1) Journal of Agrarian Change 71–92.

Sindiso Mnisi and Aninka Claassens, ‘Rural Women Redefining Land Rights in the Context of Living Customary Law’ (2009) 25(3) South African Journal on Human Rights 491–516.

Ben Cousins, ‘Tenure Reform in South Africa: Titling versus Social Embeddedness’ (2005) 32(2) Forum for Development Studies 415–442.

Aninka Claassens and Sizani Ngubane, ‘Women, Land and Power: The Impact of the Communal Land Rights Act’ in Aninka Claassens and Ben Cousins (eds), Land, Power & Custom: Controversies Generated by South Africa’s Communal Land Rights Act (UCT Press 2008) 154–183.

Commission for Gender Equality, Exploring Barriers to Women’s Access to Communal Land in Selected Provinces of South Africa (2024).

For the statistics mentioned in the episode

Statistics South Africa, Women’s Progress in Democratic South Africa: Evidence from Census Data, 1996–2022 (2026).

Primary law

* Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, s 25 — particularly ss 25(5)–(9) on equitable access to land, tenure security and land reform.

* Interim Protection of Informal Land Rights Act 31 of 1996 (IPILRA) — the legislation intended to protect informal and customary land rights while comprehensive tenure reform was developed.

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What happens when a constitution outlives some of the values of the society that created it?

In this episode of Language for Living, I explore Article 41.2 of the Irish Constitution, often referred to as the “woman in the home” provision ,and the ideas about women, motherhood, care and family that shaped its drafting in 1937.

I look at Éamon de Valera, Hanna Sheehy Skeffington and Fr John Charles McQuaid, later Archbishop of Dublin, before turning to the bigger constitutional questions: What is a constitution actually for? How much should the intentions of its drafters matter? And should constitutions be understood as fixed texts or living documents?

Finally, I return to Ireland’s 2024 Care referendum and ask what we can — and importantly, what we cannot — conclude from the public’s overwhelming rejection of the proposed replacement for Article 41.2.

At the heart of the episode is a question: what should we do when the words of a constitution remain the same, but the society living under them changes?

Further reading 📚

• Laura Cahillane, ‘Revisiting Article 41.2’ (2017) 40 Dublin University Law Journal. For the history, interpretation and continued controversy surrounding the “woman in the home” provision.
• Houses of the Oireachtas Library & Research Service, Article 41.2 of the Constitution: Women in the Home (L&RS Note, 27 June 2018). A particularly useful overview of the origins of Article 41.2, its interpretation and the history of proposals to amend it.
• Maria Luddy, ‘A “Sinister and Retrogressive” Proposal: Irish Women’s Opposition to the 1937 Draft Constitution’ (2005) 15 Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 175–195. For the contemporary opposition of Irish women, including Hanna Sheehy Skeffington, to the treatment of women in the draft Constitution.
• Finola Kennedy, ‘Two Priests, the Family and the Irish Constitution’ (1998) 87(348) Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 353–364. For the influence of Catholic thinking and Fr John Charles McQuaid on the constitutional treatment of the family.
• Gerard Hogan, The Origins of the Irish Constitution 1928–1941 (Royal Irish Academy 2012). For the wider drafting history of Bunreacht na hÉireann, including de Valera and the political, legal and religious actors involved in its creation.
• McGee v Attorney General [1974] IR 284. A landmark Irish constitutional case relevant to the idea that constitutional interpretation cannot simply remain frozen in the conditions that existed when the Constitution was adopted.
• An Coimisiún Toghcháin (Electoral Commission), Referendums on Family and Care (2024). For the official explanation of the proposed constitutional amendments and the outcome of the two referendums held on 8 March 2024.
• An Coimisiún Toghcháin (Electoral Commission), Family & Care Referendums Voter Survey Report (National Election and Democracy Study 2025). For the post-referendum research into how and why people voted as they did — particularly useful for understanding why a No vote cannot simply be treated as an endorsement of the existing Article 41.2.

Language for Living with Dr Zoe Chitare gives language to the ideas, structures and invisible rules that shape our everyday lives.