ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter (Chapter 3) concludes with an assertion that respecting the principle of irreducible minimal moral threshold should be our moral responsibility today in the face of the divisions and differences on the African continent and the consequent othering. The principle has three ‘binding’ requirements namely negative duty, positive duty and commensurability. The negative duty is a duty of no harm. The positive duty is simultaneously a duty of prevention (in non-relation to the negative duty) and a duty of remedy (in relation to the negative duty), while commensurability is a regulative notion that specifically determines the extensity of the duty of remedy and generally determines the extensity of the positive duty. Conscious of the divisions and differences on the continent, and taking the analysis in the preceding chapter as a prelude, this current chapter employs the social contract as a methodological device to explain different scenarios in which African states and Africans can find themselves depending on what they make of the social contract and depending on which identities they form and which values they adopt through the social contract.
