May the Real Ubuntu Please Stand Up?

Abstract

This article defends an alternative account of ubuntu and makes a novel proposition about African morality and ethics. In doing so, it refutes the normative account of ubuntu premised on the aphorism umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (persons are persons through other persons). According to this “greatest harmony” account, Africans are harmonic collectivists and sharers, linked together by community-defining conveyor-belts of moral and ethical goodwill “gifts.” It is assumed that an African theory of right action produces harmony and reduces discord. I aver, however, that such a prima facie interpretation, notwithstanding its intuitive appeal, is still open to some rather strong doubt.

NOTES

Notes

1. At another level, shifting the terms from “umuntu” to, say, “inja” (dog), “imbongolo” (donkey), “ingulube” (pig), “inyoni” (bird), “isihlahla” (tree), or “umfula” (river) imply some interesting interpretations:

• Inja ibainja ngezinye izinja = a dog is a dog with other dogs

• Imbongolo ibaimbongolo ngezinye izimbongolo = a donkey is a donkey with other donkeys

• Ingulube ibaingulube ngezinye izingulube = a pig is a pig with other pigs

• Inyoni ibainyoni ngezinye izinyoni = a bird is a bird with other birds

• Isihlahla siba yisihlahla ngezinye izihlahla = a tree is a tree with other trees

• Umfula ungumfula ngeminye imifula = a river is a river with other rivers

If a dog, donkey, pig, bird, tree, or river, respectively, is only a dog, donkey, pig, bird, tree, or river with other dogs, donkeys, pigs, birds, trees, or rivers, where does this leave the definition of ubuntu? Where and when does this “shared identity” begin to suggest that the quality that is being referred to is a gift?

What is being referred to in the examples given above could be that a tree (or dog, donkey, bird, pig, or river) is difficult to recognize or identify as a tree if there were only this one tree in the world. Rather, our prior knowledge and memory of many such trees is what allows a tree to become a tree to observers. One isolated tree on its own is not enough to leave behind a falsifiable identity of “tree,” such that further acquaintances with different and more trees may be necessary in order for a picture of the identity “tree” to settle. In any case, the notion of a tree being a tree with other trees does not appear to contain much that should lead us to naturally impute “gift-ness” to trees. The equation of ubuntu with “gift,” “harmony,” and “goodwill” has not yet been sufficiently called into question.

2. Without this First Giver, there can be no ubuntu. This First Giver, however, could not have been human. This is because as a First Giver, he or she did not receive or acquire the gift of ubuntu. There would not have been anyone around to acquire the gift from or to give ubuntu to this First Giver. The illogicality comes thus: if Africans became persons from receiving ubuntu from a nonperson, how could this be a gift? This gift is, therefore, essentially a nongift. Its “gift-ness” is nullified and voided by the fact that the giver has no humanity, and is no human. How can a non-human give humanity? The voiding of the originary Giver leaves Africans without humanity.

A possible solution to the dilemma of the First Giver would be to abandon ourselves to the view that God gave the first gift of humanity to the first human being. Such a solution is a throwback to the story of Genesis, Prometheus, and other creation/“giver” stories. The problem with such a solution, however, is that it seeks to explain everyday reality through a set of mythologies that ideally should not operate in the absence of interpretive disclaimers. The fixed definition of umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu as a set of relationships predetermined by and on “sharing” and “gifting” reduces Africans to vessels without agency, psychology, self or subjectivity. To say that an African's self is gifted to him or her is one way to deny that the African has a self. Such a view of humanity cannot allow, for instance, a conception of justice or freedom. Justice and freedom are not gifts, but are won and demanded. At the very least, Shutte's notion of “gift” needs to be clarified. In its present form, it mocks the humanity of Africans.

3. Such “freedom” protects the “free individual” from authorities and governments and includes such oft-touted “freedoms” as freedom of expression or media freedom.

4. Ramose (1999) even goes as far as interpreting Kwame Gyekye's assertion about the Akan people's subscription to a “tripartite conception of a person” (Gyekye, 1984, p. 20) not only to mean that the Akan essentially hold an “individualistic (derivative) concept of person” (p. 80) but also that the Akan are an exception to the African norm. The Akan concept of a person, says Ramose, is “the exception to the rule that for African traditional thought a person is primarily a wholeness” (p. 80). Whether or not Gyekye was saying the Akan are “individualistic” is, however, not at all immediately or obviously clear.