Kate Parkin, (see Who We Are) edited the wonderful book on Nelson Mandela (Mandela The Authorised Portrait, Bloomsbury, 2006) and she shared with us the wonderful notion of Ubuntu.
Ubuntu (IPA: /ùbúntú/) is a South African ethic or ideology focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other.
The word comes from the Zulu and Xhosa languages. Ubuntu is seen as a traditional African concept.
What it means:
- humanity towards others
- belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity
- humanity to others
- I am what I am because of who we all are
- I am because we are
- humanity or fellow feeling; kindness. [Nguni]
Ubuntu is seen as one of the founding principles of the new republic of South Africa and connected to the idea of an African Renaissance.
Here’s what Desmond Tutu said about it…
Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. When we want to give high praise to someone we say, “Yu u nobuntuâ€; “Hey, so-and-so has ubuntu.†Then you are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.†. . . We say, “A person is a person through other persons.†. . . A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed…. To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. What dehumanizes you inexorably dehumanizes me. [Forgiveness] gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanize them.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, from “No Future Without Forgivenessâ€
This idea is simply that we can only be fully who we are because of each other. This rich and simple idea reminds me of many other thinkers who have considered the importance of relationship and contact over the last 50 years.
- Richard Erskine said that ‘the need for relationship constitutes a primary motivating experience of human behaviour, and contact is the means by which the need is met’. Many psychologists believe, be they behaviourists or psychoanalysts, that we are formed by our first and critical primary relationship with parent, or caregiver and that these patterns of attachment imbue our thoughts, feelings and behaviour in many and subtle ways. (see Attachment article by Duncan)
- William Bloom (see Retreats) uses the wonderful Buddhist image of greeting the sould of the other person, acknowledging that you are made from the same energy, using the poetic idea of wings coming from the base of your spine to greet the other, balancing this with the ocassional need to come home to self (Namaste)
- Robert Holden, the happiness expert uses the powerful African introduction where you greet your partner with the words ‘I am her to be seen’ and they respond, mindfully, ‘I see you’.
- John Bowlby’s pioneering work on Attachment and how important our first two years are in informing the ways we are in the world in relation to others (see articles)
I hope the idea resonates for you.
Idea
Sit quietly and reflect on the following questions.
- What does Ubuntu mean for you?
- Who are you connected to?
- How do you become fully the person you can be, as they do?
- How do you help each other to do that?
- Is it spending more time with an individual?
- Is it connecting ‘yourself’ by reflection, on your connectedness and attachment to others?
- How do you find Ubuntu, or Unconditional Positive Regard for the difficult member of your team.
