“I am because we are”

The Person in the African context

African peoples, despite the myriads of different geographical areas and ethnic groups, have a great wealth of values in common: the distinct communitarian root that the human being always has.

The communitarian root of being a Person

This is an essential and constitutive element. We have an emblematic example of this by being able to come in contact with societies marked by Ubuntu, according to the proverb of the Bantu peoples “I am because we are”, which privileges the sociality of the human being and the realization of the self in interaction with others. “I am what I am because of what we all are”.

Ubuntu – as the World Forum of Civil Society Networks reminds us – is an ancient word in the Bantu language. It could be translated as Humanity. It is a philosophy and a conception of life that is the spiritual foundation of African societies. It  is a unifying worldview, expressed in the Khosa/Zulu proverb:

“UMUNTU NGUMUNTU NGABANTU”.

“A person is a person through and through other people”.

Ubuntu defines what it means to be a human being. We affirm our humanity when we recognise that of others. Ubuntu helps the understanding of muntu = “man/person”. Muntu is person through other people. A communal, relational concept of man is thus developed, which defines the person, his value based on his relationships with others. One understands muntu by including it in Ubuntu, a kind of communal or relational humanity. It is therefore a traditional African philosophy that offers us an understanding of ourselves in relationship with the world, in harmony with others and all of creation, believing in a universal bond of participation that binds and unites all of humanity.

We could say that ‘Ubuntu’ defines ‘humanity’ for African culture. This concept has been studied and elaborated especially in South Africa and Ghana and expresses the way of life of the African human being.

The thinking of some researchers

Many studies have been done on this concept. Some authors even express it with the phrase: “I am because we are” (Prof J. Mbiti, 1963).

The South African philosopher Augustine Shutte (1993) writes: “This proverb is the Khosa expression of a notion that is common to all African languages and cultural traditions.

It concerns both the interdependence of the person on others for the exercise of his development and the realization of his powers that are recognized in traditional African thought, as well as the understanding of what it is about being a person that underlies this principle”.

Ubuntu, Nelson Mandela explains, contains the aspect of respect, sharing, trust, altruism, collaboration. “We are all connected,” says the South African film ‘In my Country’, “whoever touches me, touches you…; each of us is part of the other. When that policeman hurts me, he is also hurting himself. He is hurting the whole world, but also himself’.

“A person with Ubuntu,” says Desmond Tutu, “is open, available to others, in solidarity with others…he knows… that we are hurt when others are humiliated or hurt or tortured or oppressed. When one person’s living conditions improve, everyone is affected for the better, and if someone is hungry, Ubuntu’s response is that we are all collectively responsible. “I am what I am because of what we all are”.

Ubuntu is invoked to bring about a stronger sense of unity and, in social relationships, to be willing to encounter the inherent differences in each other’s humanity, to be informed by them and to enrich our own.

Rite of greeting

Interestingly, in the spirit of Ubuntu, the rite of greeting takes on a meaningful significance. The most common formula is “SAWU BONA”, meaning “I see you”, to which one responds: “SIKHONA” “I am here”. The order of the exchange of greetings is important: until the other person sees me, I do not exist. It is as if, the moment the other sees me, he gives me existence.  It means exposing ourselves to each other (I see you/I am here) and implies that both of us are available to meet the other, to be involved in a relationship that enriches us both.

This makes one realize how important the greeting is in an encounter with an African person. It can never, let alone in a hospital ward or in economic or reconciliation negotiations, be trivialized by haste or superficiality because it compromises the relationship and thus the dialogue.

“Being with others”

‘Ubuntu’ defines the individual based on his relationships with others. (Shutte, 1993: 46 ff). Being a person means by definition ‘being with others’. “With others is not something added to a pre-existing, self-sufficient being”, Macquarrie rightly observes, “rather both these beings: the self and the other find themselves part of a whole in which they are already related” (1972: 104). “And the subjectivity of the one is enriched in the encounter with that of the other, respecting its dynamic nature and natural development. So, the perception of the other, typical of ‘Ubuntu’ is never rigidly closed, on the contrary it is adaptable and open. It gives the other the possibility of being and becoming. Since it is a process of self-realization through others, it simultaneously promotes the self-realization of others” (cf. also Broodryk, 1997a:5-7).

This is masterfully confirmed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu in these words: “a person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirms others, does not feel threatened by the fact that others are capable and good, because this person has a self-assurance of his own that comes from knowing that he belongs to a greater whole”.

The concept of ‘Ubuntu’ implies that we need the presence of the other person. No one is, absolutely, more important than the other, because no man is complete or able to fulfil his vital desires without depending in one way or another on other people, since life is made up of multiple complementary relationships to achieve personal or social ends. Contrary to the way the person is conceived in Western culture, in African culture the self and the world are united and mingle in a network of reciprocal relationships. (1996: 46-47)

There is a shift from the independence of the individual to inter-dependence, from loneliness to solidarity, from ‘individuality as opposed to community’ to individuality for the sake of community, as is well testified to by the irreplaceable existence for the African of the extended family, the clan, relations with the village of origin even when living far away in the city, and the way society is conceived.

By Maria Magnolfi

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