Oneness: humanity, you and me both - I am, because U R..
Ubuntu is a Nguni word which has no direct translation into English, but is used to describe a particular African worldview in which people can only find fulfillment through interacting with other people. Thus is represents a spirit of kinship across both race and creed which united mankind to a common purpose.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said "Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language…It is to say. 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours'…" *
* No Future Without Forgiveness: A Personal Overview of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission , Desmond Tutu, © 2000.
“Ubuntu is a concept in the Bantu Language.
It is about the essence of Humanness.
Simply put: ‘people are people through other people’
I am human because I belong. This concept acknowledges both the rights and the responsibilities of each citizen in promoting individual and societal wellbeing."
Ubuntu means "I am, because you are". In fact, the word ubuntu is just part of the Zulu phrase "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu", which literally means that a person is a person through other people. Ubuntu has its roots in humanist African philosophy, where the idea of community is one of the building blocks of society. Ubuntu is that nebulous concept of common humanity, oneness: humanity, you and me both.
The Nguni languages are a group of Bantu languages spoken in southern Africa by the Nguni people.
Sources:
No comments:
Post a Comment