Motif: UbuNtu

UbuNtu – the overarching unity-conscious worldview/cultural philosophy of BaNtu [‘persons’] which translates into English as “I Am, because We Are… & since We Are, therefore I Am.” [John S. Mbiti]. In contrast to disenfranchising, alienating, & enslaving (neo)colonial, apartheid [Boer term for ‘apart-hate’], & imperialist philosophies, UbuNtu actively embodies a state of organic balance, communal harmony & grace, and aesthetic beauty… towards which Africa’s transformative humanizing modes of oral discourse have ideologically aspired over the millennia and throughout the Diaspora as evident in an Africa-centered perspective of Black Popular Music…

“In our African worldview, we have something called ubuNtu. In Xhosa, we say, “Umntu ngumntu ngabantu.” This expression is very difficult to render in English, but we could translate it by saying, “A person is a person through other persons.” We need other human beings for us to learn how to be human, for none of us comes fully formed into the world. We would not know how to talk, to walk, to think, to eat as human beings unless we learned how to do these things from other human beings. For us, the solitary human being is a contradiction in terms.

UbuNtu is the essence of being human. It speaks of how my humanity is caught up and bound up inextricably with yours. It says, not as Descartes did, “I think, therefore I am” but rather, “I am because I belong.” I need other human beings in order to be human. The completely self-sufficient human being is subhuman. I can be me only if you are fully you. I am because we are, for a delicate network of relationships, of interdependence with our fellow human beings, with the rest of creation.

I have gifts that you don’t have, and you have gifts that I don’t have. We are different in order to know our need of each other. To be human is to be dependent.” – [Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu]