Ubuntu 2.0: Can Ubuntu Philosophy inspire Africa’s Future?

By Martin Kalungu-Banda — author of “Leading Like Madiba: Leadership from Nelson Mandela”

Confronting my demons

Among the many “demons” that haunt me, two stick out more than any other. The first is failing mathematics in my first year at university. The second is not to have completed Placide Tempels’ book “Ubuntu Philosophy.” My way of conquering my “mathematics demon” was to collaborate with a Zambian mathematician, Dr Chibelushi Musongole, to establish the Centre for Mathematics Excellence (CME), only three years ago. The aim of CME is to help the Zambian society demystify mathematics as a challenging subject reserved only for the gifted few.

It took twenty-five years after my first encounter with Temples’ book to return to it. The reason I could not finish reading Tempels’ book — acclaimed by many missionaries, scholars and colonialists as a ground-breaking study of the Africans in the fifties and sixties — was that I found the book extremely insulting to me, as an African. Tempels writes, “Need we, then, be surprised that beneath the veneer of ‘civilization’ the ‘negro’ remains always ready to break through? We are astonished to find one (African) who has spent years among Whites readapt himself easily by the end of a few months to the community life of his place of origin and soon becomes absorbed in it. He has no need to readjust because the roots of his thought are unchanged…. (they) remain ‘muntu’ under a light coating of white imitation’” (p 27).

Seeing the other side of the insults

As I painfully continued reading the work of Tempels, something suddenly shifted in me when I came across the following passages: “Why does not the African change? How is it that the pagan, the uncivilised, is stable while the ‘evolue,’ the Christian, is not?” (p 26) and “In the minds of Bantu, all beings in the universe possess vital force of their own: human, animal, vegetable or inanimate” (page 46). I realised that Tempels was inadvertently acknowledging two things about the people he was seeking to convert to his form of Christianity, and civilisation.

First, Tempels unwittingly eulogises the systems thinking process of Africans. Each being, animate or inanimate, possesses a life-force. This life-force connects all beings in one existence. For an African (and for many wisdom traditions), the soil and the stone contain a life-force. They are alive. Just like the human, the animal and the plant. This is why we treat every being with awe. Our ancestors knew that an animal was entitled to its life (force) and, therefore, apologised and gave thanks to the animal that is about to be slaughtered for providing food to humans. It is the same thinking that made our parents upset when we ate from the fruits of the new rains before the thanksgiving ceremony to acknowledge the gifts from Mother Nature was conducted. All beings have a life-force and are interdependent. This reality imposes a natural duty on us, as humans: to learn, honour and promote the sacredness of the entire eco-system in which we are privileged to live.

Second, Tempels admits that Africans are resilient. In spite of the last 401 years of slavery and colonialism, Africans’ awareness of the existence and interconnectedness of the life-force that binds all beings together remains intact. In the face of all the abuse and evils the Africans have suffered, they somehow have an indelible imprint in their soul and body of who they were before slavery and colonialism. Elsewhere in the book, Tempels talks about the failure of the efforts of the missionaries to convert the Africans to the western brand of Christianity. He counsels his fellow missionaries that for as long as they do not consider and acknowledge the “African Ontology” (their perception of ‘being’ and ‘existence’), they would not manage to convert Africans to their type of Christianity or western way of life.

Ubuntu 1.0

As Tempels pejoratively describes the African way of life and spirituality, he also touches on what I think is really special. He brushes with the essence of “Ubuntu,” but his version of “Christianity” and “civilisation” stands in the way of him seeing the beauty and power of what he found in Africa. And I pick it up from there.

Ubuntu as a philosophy, way of life, way of being and living, is expressed in several variations:

• I am because you are
• I am because we are
• My well-being is inseparable from your well-being
• My happiness is bound to your happiness
• I see you in our collective humanity
• A human being is a human being because of other human beings

What is contained in all the above variations are the notions of interdependence, fairness and justice. That there isn’t the “them” and “us.” That we grow and thrive only in community. In Ubuntu, the individual is not endlessly striving to secure “individual freedom” from everyone else. The individual finds themselves in community and thrives from the context of community. The African sense of fairness and justice issues from and rests in seeing and feeling oneself in others. Treating others as sacred. Tempels himself acknowledges this as he counsels his fellow missionaries and colonialists, “Let us do as the Africans do. When they hold a palaver it is a rule that whoever is arguing a case should suffer an interruption. Even when he stops speaking, the judge will say to him, ‘Have you finished speaking?’ and only after that gives the floor to the opposing side.” (p 44).

I refer to the above understanding of “Ubuntu,” which mainly focuses on the relationship between people, as “Ubuntu 1.0.”

What does Ubuntu 2.0 look like?

Ubuntu 2.0 widens the notions of interdependence, fairness and justice. Going beyond “fellow humans” and the “present time.” Ubuntu 2.0 — and this is something our Ancestors already knew — puts a premium on other aspects of existence:

1. In the statement “my well-being is inseparable from your well-being;” “your well-being” does not just refer to other human beings but also to the following:

a. The whole of nature. When one part of nature becomes unwell (mainly because of human behaviour), our wellness is threatened. We are living this reality now as COVID-19 shows that we have been encroaching on nature for too long.

b. The Past. In Ubuntu philosophy, the past in not gone. It is the active and alive space of our Ancestors. From that past, our Ancestors stand ready to support and guide our good intentions and rebuke evil ones.

c. The future. In Africa, people are often reminded to think about what kind of Ancestors they would like to be. Good Ancestors are valued forever. They are called upon and celebrated. Bad Ancestors, while they remain alive, are relegated to the backyard of our memory. Forgotten.

d. The Present. The best way to guarantee being a Good Ancestor is by:

• Investing one’s energy and heart in whatever the present moment offers you to do.
• Respecting the land and all that is on it.
• Being in service of one’s community.
• Preparing the inheritance of those who will call you “Our Ancestor.”

2. Putting the right balance between “individual rights” and “collective rights”. Some western thinkers are of the view that Ubuntu philosophy puts so much emphasis on the “collective” or “community” that the rights of the individual are ignored or even thwarted. It is argued that failure to emphasise and put a premium on individual rights breeds conformity, thereby stunting and killing creativity and innovation.

Some African thinkers accuse champions of “individual rights” of breaking the very fabric of a good society. They argue that putting too much emphasis on the rights of the individual makes society look like it is inherently oppressive to the individual. We all need society to grow, thrive and be happy. In Ubuntu 2.0, there should be a symbiotic relationship and constant dialogue between the needs of the “community” and those of the “individual.” The community is the nesting and nourishing place from which the individual springs and gains purpose. The individual is the medium through which the talent and genius the community needs to survive and thrive manifests.

1. Competition is not the lifeblood of a good society. While “competition” has its own place in society, its value has been over-sold, especially since the publication of Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” Cooperation and interdependence are the lifeblood of a good society. As Kate Raworth, author of Doughnuts Economics, states, “When Adam Smith, extolling the power of the market, noted that, ‘it is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner,’ he forgot to mention the benevolence of his mother, Margaret Douglas, who had raised her boy alone from birth.” At the very least, Smith needed the smallest community — family — to bring to the world the genius that he did.

Conclusion

Ubuntu 2.0 should help us design, among others, the following aspects of what best positions us to be good ancestors and makes a good society:

• Agriculture system that protects and promotes the well-being of Mother Nature (not killing Her with chemicals and irresponsible harvesting of what She offers).
• Education system that promotes the values of interdependence, honesty, and utter respect for one another & Mother Nature, alongside facilitating individual and collective genius to blossom.
• Healthcare systems that serve the well-being of all, not only the wealthy. COVID-19 has so clearly taught us, our continued obstinacy notwithstanding, that unless we attain health for all, none of us is safe.
• Economic system that begins from the premise that all human activities are dependent upon and should promote the well-being of Mother Nature; an economy that emphasizes cooperation rather than competition; serves everyone and leaves no one behind.

Ubuntu.Lab Institute

With colleagues from across 24 African countries — with the intention to reach the entire continent — we have established Ubuntu.Lab Institute (ULI), a space through which we are prototyping the application of Ubuntu Philosophy as we seek to contribute to the co-creation of Africa’s future. Since 2018, ULI has run 4 cohorts, reaching more than 3,000 participants. Each cohort has produced various prototypes in areas such as wealth creation, transformative education, agriculture, healing our soil, and well-being, among many others. In the next article, I will reflect on some of these prototypes and ULI’s Cohort 5. In UBUNTU 2.0, winning TOGETHER is possible.

I am very grateful to Rachel Smith, Neo Kalungu-Banda and Eva Pomeroy for offering useful comments as I was writing this article.

Article by Martin Kalungu-Banda, Co-founder of Ubuntu.Lab Institute, Senior Faculty at the Presencing Institute, Visiting Fellow at the Said Business School’s Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Research Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT-CoLab.