The term appears in the epilogue of the Interim
Constitution of South Africa (1993): ‘there is a need for understanding but not
for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but
not for victimization’.
Nelson Mandela would explain Ubuntu with an
analogy: A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't
have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food and
attend him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects.
Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question
therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around
you to be able to improve?
Ubuntu is an
idea from the Southern African region which literally means ‘humanness’
and is often used to mean ‘the belief in a universal bond of sharing that
connects all humanity’. Ubuntu induces an ideal of shared human subjectivity
that promotes a community's good through an unconditional recognition and
appreciation of individual uniqueness and difference.
We think of
ourselves far too frequently as individuals separated from one another, whereas
we are connected and what we do affects the whole World. When we do well, it
spreads out. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that we can't exist as a
human being in isolation. We can't be human all by yourself, and when we have Ubuntu,
we are known for our generosity.
A person with Ubuntu is open and does not feel
threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance
that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is
diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured
or oppressed. When appropriated by many, Ubuntu will unite to impact attitudes
and actions towards a responsive and responsible world where spontaneous
communities will involve in collaboration for the common good.
Indeed,
we are bound together in an interconnected way
let’s ‘unite to impact’ the attitude of Ubuntu, each day!
let’s ‘unite to impact’ the attitude of Ubuntu, each day!
- Pravin K. Sabnis
Goa, India.
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