Ubuntu and the Reconstitution of Community

James Ogude

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780253042149
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Ubuntu is premised on the ethical belief that an individual's humanity is fostered in a network of human relationships: I am because you are; we are because you are. The essays in this lively volume elevate the debate about ubuntu beyond the buzzword it has become, especially within South African religious and political contexts. The seasoned scholars and younger voices gathered here grapple with a range of challenges that ubuntu puts forward. They break down its history and analyze its intellectual surroundings in African philosophical traditions, European modernism, religious contexts, and human rights discourses. The discussion embraces questions about what it means to be human and to be a part of a community, giving attention to moments of loss and fragmentation in postcolonial modernity, to come to a more meaningful definition of belonging in a globalizing world. Taken together, these essays offer a rich understanding of ubuntu in all of its complexity and reflect on a value system rooted in the everyday practices of ordinary people in their daily encounters with churches, schools, and other social institutions.

1

UBUNTU IN THE CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND PRAXIS OF ARCHBISHOP DESMOND TUTU AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE AND HUMAN RIGHTS

Aloo Osotsi Mojola

THE TERM UBUNTU (AND ITS VARIANT FORMS, E.G., Kiswahili Utu) is of Bantu origin and is common to the languages and dialects of the Bantu language family. In reference to the languages and dialects of this African language family, Derek Nurse and Gerard Philippson, in The Bantu Languages, note that “Bantu-speaking communities live in Africa south of a line from Nigeria across the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of Congo (formerly Zaire), Uganda, and Kenya, to southern Somalia in the east. Most communities between that line and the Cape are Bantu. The exceptions are pockets; in the south, some small and fast dwindling Khoisan communities; in Tanzania one, maybe two, Khoi-San outliers” (Nurse and Philippson 2003, 1). Thus “communities speaking Bantu languages are indigenous to 27 African countries” and “roughly one African in three” speaks a Bantu language (1). The Bantu language family is part of the larger Niger-Congo language group, one of the four language groups found on the African continent, namely, the Niger-Congo, the Nilo-Saharan, the Afroasiatic, and the Khoi-San (Heine and Nurse 2000).

The term Bantu was first coined by German scholar and linguist Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek in his classic text A Comparative Grammar of South African Languages (1862) to refer to the entire group of languages that use the term Bantu or share significant grammatical, morphological, phonological, lexical, and semantic features. Bleek may be considered as the Father of Bantu Philology as he pioneered the use of the term Bantu to refer to this group of languages. He was intrigued by the common use of the root or stem -ntu (or variants such as -ndu, -tu, -to, -nto). This root means “entity” or “object.” When it is given the prefix mu- (or variants across the range of Bantu languages omu-, mo-, um-, m-, mo-) to become muntu (or its variants) it means “human being” or “person.” When it has the prefix ba- (or variants aba-, a-, vha-, vho-, bo-, wa-) to become bantu, which is the plural form, it means “human beings” or “persons.”

Some twenty-three nominal or noun classes, mostly paired and with corresponding semantics, have been identified in this group of languages. In the most common and ubiquitous noun class, class 1 (for example in Luyia, Luganda, Lusoga, Kisukuma, Kinyarwanda and others), mu is singular and is paired with class 2 ba, its plural, and usually refers to human beings, proper names, kinship terms, personifications. Noun class 7, for example, has the prefix ki- (or variants such as eki-, chi-, oshi-, tshi-, se-, isi-, e-, i-) and gives kintu, meaning roughly “thing” across the range of Bantu languages. Its plural class 8 has prefix bi- (or such variants as ebi-, zi-, i-, zwi-, di-, izi-), which yields bintu, which means “things.” The semantic content of bintu includes body parts, tools, instruments and utensils, animals and insects, languages, diseases, and outstanding people. Not all Bantu languages necessarily have the full set of twenty-three noun classes. Katamba notes that “in no single language are all the approximately twenty-four noun classes reconstructed for Proto-Bantu. . . . The highest number of classes retained by a single language seems to be twenty-one, as in the case in Ganda. Languages with numerous noun classes are said to exhibit the canonical Bantu noun class system, while others with ‘reduced’ noun class systems have only a rump of the original set” (Katamba 2003, 108. See also Katamba’s table 7.1 at 104 and table 7.4 at 109).

Ubuntu, which is the focus of our interest in this paper, belongs to noun class 14, whose semantic content consists of abstracts and collectives and thus has no singular or plural. Its stem, as noted above, is -ntu and its prefix is ubu- (and such variants as obu-, u-, vhu-, bo-, wu-), which yields Ubuntu (and variants, i.e., obuntu, untu, vhuntu, bontu, wuntu, etc.). As this analysis shows, the term Ubuntu is not limited to the “Nguni language family which comprises Zulu, Xhosa, Swati and Ndebele” (Van Binsbergen 2001, 53) or the Southern African Bantu languages, as many commentators or writers suggest. On the contrary, the term is common to the entire spectrum of Bantu languages, stretching from the Nigerian-Cameroonian border all the way to the southern tip of the African continent. Its derivation is inextricably connected with muntu. Muntu (or any of its variants), as indicated above, means “person” or “human.” Ubuntu, an abstract noun derived from it, can therefore etymologically be said to convey the idea of personhood or humanness.

Situating Ubuntu within the African Cultural and Belief Context

Words or key terms cannot be understood in a vacuum. They are inextricably connected to their underlying sociocultural contexts and environments, belief systems, and the historical associations that affect word meanings. Ubuntu cannot therefore be fully or properly understood without a look at the history, cultures, religious practices, and philosophies of the Bantu communities who regularly employ the term.

It might be the case that Bantu communities used the term muntu to refer to one of their own, in other words, to a fellow Bantu. It does not seem to be so. The term muntu means any person, any human being, irrespective of ethnicity or race. All humans are included in its semantic content. Even though some misunderstanding has led commentators to limit the term Ubuntu to the personhood or humanness of members of a Bantu community or communities, the term is inclusive and embraces all of humanity. Etymologically and semantically, it clearly refers to the humanity or humanness of any human being (this follows from the fact that Ubuntu as argued above is not language specific or ethnocentric, but person or human centric).

Among the Bantu-speaking peoples and communities of Africa, Ubuntu has to do with the essence of what it means to be human, what really makes humans human. Ubuntu means humanness, personhood—a sharing and a participation in the values that constitute, sustain, and ensure the existence of human community. Placide Tempels ([1952] 1959), in his classic and well-known text Bantu Philosophy, made a preliminary attempt to explore how Bantu communities understood this Ubuntu. His work and life as a Franciscan Catholic missionary among the Baluba in what was then Belgian Congo from 1933 to 1962 motivated him to search for a philosophy underlying the beliefs and practices of the Baluba and of the Bantu peoples in general. In his text, he speaks of a Bantu ontology, a Bantu wisdom or criteriology, a Bantu psychology, and a Bantu ethics, among other philosophical concerns. The paternalistic approach espoused in the book is a reflection of the negative European prejudices against Africans during that era, which explains the unfavorable and negative reception Bantu Philosophy received, especially among African scholars. Despite the unpopularity and strong rejection that the work has encountered, it stimulated many subsequent pioneer studies, among them that of the Rwandese priest and scholar Abbé Alexis Kagame (1955, 1970, 1976). Abbé Kagame’s studies of the Rwandese language and culture and its underlying religious and philosophical ideas were no doubt influenced by Fr. Tempels’s work. His key text, La philosophie bantu-rwandaise de l’être [The Bantu-Rwandan Philosophy of Being] was an exploration and reflection on the nature of being as manifested in the Kinyarwanda language and culture. Abbé Kagame took to heart Louis Hjelmslev’s dictum, “Il n’y a pas de philosophie sans linguistique.” That is, the underlying philosophy of a people and culture is found in an exploration and reflection on the structures of their heart language. Thus, in La philosophie bantu comparée, Kagame (1976) extended his explorations to Bantu languages in general.

It is interesting to note that Abbé Kagame was the first African scholar to refer to Ubuntu in writing. Thus in his La philosophie bantu comparée (1976), he speaks of Ubuntu in terms of the virtue of liberality. He did not, however, pursue further the axiological aspects of Ubuntu. He concluded from his studies that the Banyarwanda and Bantu cultures in general conceptualize reality under four fundamental categories of thought, namely (1) muntu (plural bantu), human being, rational being; (2) kintu (plural bintu), nonhuman being, thing, nonrational being; (3) hantu, place and time, spacing and conceptualizing from being a temporal perspective; (4) kuntu, modality, modal being (in other words, contingency or determination). Reducing Bantu or African philosophy to these four categories is not without its challenges and questions. The influence of ancient Greek as in modern Western philosophical thinking is clearly evident here. These four categories are basic semantic categories derived from Kinyarwanda or other Bantu linguistic morphology, as a quick look at the semantic or nominal classes of Bantu languages and a reflection on them will quickly show. Janheinz Jahn, commenting on these four categories of Kagame’s philosophy, writes,

Everything there is, must necessarily belong to one of these four categories and must be conceived of not as substance but as force. Man is a force, all things are forces, place and time are forces and the “modalities” are forces. Man and woman (category Muntu), dog and stone (category Kintu), east and yesterday (category Hantu), beauty and laughter (category Kuntu) are forces and as such are all related to one another. The relationship of these forces is expressed in their very names, for if we remove the determinative the stem NTU is the same for all the categories. NTU is the universal force as such, which, however never occurs apart from its manifestation: Muntu, Kintu, Hantu and Kuntu. NTU is Being itself, the cosmic universal force, which only modern, rationalizing thought can abstract from its manifestations. NTU is that force in which Being and beings coalesce. (Jahn 1961, 100–101)

The usage of force here is clearly influenced by Fr. Tempels’s Bantu Philosophy ([1952] 1959). He states, for example, that “force is the nature of being, force is being, being is force. . . . Muntu signifies, then, vital force endowed with intelligence and will. . . . God is the great muntu, . . . (1959, 51) the great Person, that is to say the great, powerful and reasonable living force. The ‘bintu’ are rather what we call things; but according to Bantu philosophy they are beings, that is to say forces not endowed with reason, not living” (55).

Marcel Griaule (1970), a French cultural anthropologist, has also written for us his findings on the cosmology and religious ideas of the Dogon of Mali. His work is based on his studies and conversations with an ancient hunter and sage, Ogotommeli, in 1946 over some thirty-three days. The conversations revealed a complex system of cosmological and religious beliefs held by these ancient people. His findings were later published as Conversations with Ogotommeli. A number of scholars, cultural anthropologists, and students of African religions and philosophies were inspired to engage in similar studies. Among them are E. W. Smith (1950); Edward Geoffrey Parrinder (1954); Bolaji Idowu (1962, 1973); and John Mbiti (1969, 1970). These explorations and attempts to understand African belief systems and practices and their underlying values are pivotal in understanding how the idea of what it means to be human was constructed. This is central in throwing light on our understanding of Ubuntu.

Ubuntu in the Context of Some Core Values of the African Life and World

Ernst Wendland (1990) has highlighted for us in summary form some of the core principles common to African traditional life and thought. It should be noted that the list under discussion by Wendland here is based on his own observations and inferences drawn from a lifetime of study and life in Central Africa. The terms in this list are drawn mainly from the traditional religious beliefs and practices of Central Africa, where Wendland has worked and spent most of his life. The principles he listed are widely recognized and frequently referred to in the literature by various scholars and, moreover, commonly believed and practiced in a majority of sub-Saharan African cultures and communities. A principal feature of Bantu or African traditional beliefs and practices is their being “strongly homocentric in orientation and humanized in operation” (30). Tempels ([1952] 1959) described it as follows: “The created universe is centered on man. The present human generation living on earth is the center of all humanity, including the world of the dead” (64). Other characteristic features of traditional Bantu or African cultures and belief systems include the following:¹ the principle of synthesis, the principle of dynamism, the principle of gradation, the principle of communalism, the principle of experientialism, the principle of humanism, and the principle of circumscription.

The principle of synthesis refers to “a distinct preference for a synthetic approach toward life . . . an emphasis upon searching for the relatedness of things, to include rather than to exclude” (Wendland 1990, 74). The principle of dynamism or life force “involves, in effect, a total personalization of the cosmos. Every living being possesses such a force” (83). This principle is often misunderstood and is perhaps behind the reductionist claim that traditional African cultures were or are animistic. This claim, common in journalistic literature, is a gross mischaracterization of these cultures. The principle of gradation² refers to the graded, hierarchical struc...