 Ubuntu (pronounced "oo-BOON-too") is a traditional African idea that means rather more than humanity toward others and I am because you are also the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. |
Ubuntu (pronounced "oo-BOON-too") is a traditional African idea that means rather more than humanity toward others and I am because you are also the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity. While it is inextricably linked to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, ubuntu has a much wider context.
Ubuntu does not say ‘I think therefore I am.’ It says rather ‘I am human because I belong. I participate. I share. – Desmond Tutu
Time and again the prophets of doom have been confounded by the capacity and determination of South Africans to resolve their problems and to realize their shared vision of a united and peaceful and prosperous country. – Nelson Mandela
I have carried ubuntu with great reverence since I first encountered its beautiful ideal. It may be rooted in a land far from my own, but it creates a warmth within the heart that my homeland needs. Recently a student from Botswana has taught me infinitely more of the heart reality of ubuntu. I cannot tell you what it is yet but I can feel ubuntu, and I have come to realise that, without embracing such an embodied ideal of the heart, anthroposophy will wither on the vine.
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks to the very essence of being human. When you want to give high praise to someone we say, “Yu, u nobuntu”; he or she has ubuntu. This means that they are generous, hospitable, friendly, caring and compassionate. They share what they have. It also means that my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in theirs. We belong in a bundle of life. We say,“a person is a person through other people” (in Xhosa Ubuntu ungamntu ngabanye abantu and in Zulu Umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye). I am human because I belong, I participate, I share. A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good; for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes with knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when other are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.
-- Archbishop Desmond Tutu (No Future Without Forgiveness, pp 34-35)