--- title: Ubuntu summary: Ubuntu is a Southern African idea of shared humanity, often summed up as “a person is a person through other persons.” It is an ethic of community and solidarity rather than a doctrine of charity, and it has shaped South African law and the country’s approach to reconciliation. tradition: Southern African moral thought origin: The ways of life of Southern African peoples before colonial rule, expressed in sayings such as umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, and taken up in modern South African law and philosophy practice: Living in community with others, identifying with them and acting in solidarity, which includes helping one another; invoked in South Africa’s transition to democracy and by its Constitutional Court lens: Ubuntu has no ladder of gifts. Because it places a person’s humanity in their relationships, its concern is less with what one gives than with whether community and dignity are sustained, and South Africa invoked it to help rebuild a divided society. sources: - title: Constitution of the Republic of South Africa Act 200 of 1993 (repealed), National Unity and Reconciliation publisher: South African Government year: 1993 url: https://www.gov.za/documents/constitution/constitution-republic-south-africa-act-200-1993-repealed-28-jan-1994 - title: S v Makwanyane and Another (CCT3/94) [1995] ZACC 3 publisher: Constitutional Court of South Africa, via SAFLII year: 1995 url: https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZACC/1995/3.html - title: Ubuntu as a moral theory and human rights in South Africa publisher: Thaddeus Metz, African Human Rights Law Journal 11(2) year: 2011 url: https://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1996-20962011000200011 review: draft --- ## What it is *Ubuntu* is a word from the Nguni languages of Southern Africa, with related terms such as *botho* in Sotho-Tswana and *hunhu* in Shona. It literally means humanness. It is often summed up in the saying *umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu*, “a person is a person through other persons.” In a 1995 judgment, Justice Yvonne Mokgoro of South Africa’s Constitutional Court wrote that ubuntu generally translates as humaneness and, most fundamentally, as personhood and morality, taking in group solidarity, compassion, respect and human dignity. The philosopher Thaddeus Metz argues that the saying is not just an observation that people depend on each other. It is a call to become more fully human through relationships with others, by identifying with them and by acting in solidarity with them, which includes helping one another. ## In public life South Africa made ubuntu part of its transition to democracy. The 1993 interim constitution closed with a section on national unity and reconciliation, which spoke of “a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation.” In 1995, when the Constitutional Court struck down the death penalty in *S v Makwanyane*, several judges drew on ubuntu. Justice Langa wrote that its dominant theme is that the life of another person is at least as valuable as one’s own. Metz notes that the word itself does not appear in the final constitution adopted in 1996, though the court later called ubuntu the underlying motif of the Bill of Rights. ## A live debate Ubuntu’s place in public life is contested. Metz describes three common objections: that it is too vague to guide decisions, that it puts the group above individual freedom, and that ideas formed in small, pre-colonial communities don’t fit a large modern society. He also notes that there was never one single understanding of ubuntu across the region’s many peoples. Metz argues that a careful interpretation answers these objections. Whether it does is itself part of the debate. ## Through the source lens It would overclaim to call ubuntu a doctrine of giving, and Charitology does not treat it as one. Its contribution is a different starting point. Help is not a transfer from a giver to a receiver but part of what it means to live in community, and the measure is whether people’s dignity and their ties to one another are restored and sustained.