ABSTRACT
Many, maybe even all cultures have a concept of humanity, or “personhood.” The African concept of Ubuntu, Michael Battle explains, derives from the Xhosa expression, umuntu ngumuntu ngabanye bantu, which translates roughly into “a person depends on other persons to be a person.”1 It is on the principle of Ubuntu that Desmond Tutu bases his efforts to lead South African citizens, black, white, and all people of color, toward reconciliation. Writes Tutu:
In the African Weltanschauung, a person is not basically an independent solitary entity. A person is human precisely in being enveloped in the community of other human beings, in being caught up in the bundle of life. To be is to participate. The summum bonum here is not independence, but interdependence. And what is true of the human person is surely true of human aggregations.2
