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Religion and philosophy follow the Hegelian dialectic, man as thesis, evil as antithesis and ideal man or God the final synthesis, locking out persons with disability stating that they don’t meet the criteria of being human persons. In contrast, persons with disability were accepted in ancient Africa and their disorder was not shown as a physical handicap.

Human identity even in contemporary philosophical logic and metaphysics brims with controversy. Definitions of identity have caused racism, institutionalisation and denial of rights. Most saddening is the linguistic and situational identity atoned to persons with disabilities by two traditional disability models, the ‘social and medical models’, exhibiting great reliance on the utopian image of man that philosophy and religion historically have constructed as a measure for human identity.

The medical model views disability as a defect or sickness that must be cured through medical intervention (Kaplan 1999). This perspective assumes that the function of intervention or treatment is to fix, cure or ameliorate the disability so that the individual will be better able to function in society (Susan 1996). However, such categorisations create social class systems where some humans are seen as less human than others, and as a consequence persons with disability are embroiled in the fracas of identifying with normalcy.

The social model creates a social position for an individual that is constructed in response to widely held notions of normalcy, in that ‘disability is the attribution of corporeal difference – not so much a property of bodies, as a product of the cultural rules about what bodies should be or do’ (Garland 1997; Oliver 1990).

Byrne (2000) states that persons with disabilities remain philosophically marginalised as such individuals may fail to live up to the strict philosophical standards associated with human nature as rational and able-bodied. Disability Studies continues the task of defining man’s identity that fits contemporary conceptions of human identity

Religion and philosophy have incredibly alienated persons with disabilities with linguistic and derogative identities. Whereas African spiritualism inherently glorified and/or approved disability, in today’s Africa, persons with disability are increasingly objectified and abused because of ignorance and harsh economic conditions. Nevertheless, the contemporary mistreatment of people with disabilities (PWDs) does not reflect a true African culture but is a symptom and a consequence of the material and economic injustice that PWDs encounter.

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