I Am Because We Are… Understanding the Concept of ‘Ubuntu’

In 2011, I went with one of my American brothers to South Africa to introduce him to the African soil. As soon as we landed at Oliver Tambo Airport, he asked me about the saying that was beaming from the airport walls and screens: “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together!” I responded:“It’s one of those African sayings that draws from the ubuntu ethos that says:

I am because we are – that my dignity lives in your dignity, and our humanity is woven together – like threads in one cloth.”

I told him the following story to explain this further:

"When I was ten years old, living in my rural village in northern Malawi, I once asked my mother:

Amama, what makes a person like me with my bones protruding and all - to know that I am truly munthu (human)?

My mother smiled and pointed to where my stepmother and my aunts were sharing steamed sweet potatoes with children from the neighboring village, and the men were together repairing my uncle’s roof, and the boys were gathering cattle and goats to take them for feeding at the nearby river.

She said:

My girl, a person is not a person because they can speak or walk or swing their bottoms. A person becomes a person through and with others. When we share food, when we work together to make sure that no one is left without a home, food, clothes; when we talk to each other respectfully, listen to each other’s opinion, forgive each other; when we rejoice in each other’s successes and lift each other’s burdens—that is when we show ubuntu/umunthu.

If you try to live only for yourself, you become smaller, limited and less human. But when you live in a way that your own life interests and welfare are connected to the interests and welfare of others around you, your humanity grows, and so does the humanity of the whole community.

I thought about it for a moment and then I asked her, But what if someone hurts us?

My mother was quiet for a while then she replied, Then we make them know so that they can take responsibility so that they can heal together with us, because they may be hurting us because they are broken within. As long as their hurt is not healed, they will continue to hurt others and the whole village will be limping. Dear girl, we are bound together. To hurt another is to wound yourself; to heal another is to heal yourself."

My American brother seemed impressed by this understanding of being human.

I kept on thinking about examples of expressions of ubuntu, and a quotation from Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s book “Made for Goodness”, came to mind – especially his conception of ubuntu as an expression of godliness and goodness:

"Ubuntu recognizes that human beings need each other for survival and wellbeing. A person is a person through other persons…we must care for one another in order to thrive, the impulse to care, the instinct to for goodness is a shining thread woven into the fabric of our being. As human beings, we may tarnish the sheen or rend the fabric of our goodness. We can act in cruel and heartless ways. But because we are human, we cannot completely rip out or destroy every vestige of the godliness by which and for which were made. We cannot alter our essence. We are made by God who is goodness itself. We are made like God. We are made for goodness." (Tutu, 2010, p. 15)

Theorizing ubuntu

Theoretically, ubuntu/umunthu advances a distinctively African communitarian moral ontological ethos in which personhood is constituted by relationships of care and mutual recognition. Against liberal individualism’s priority of rights and the “unencumbered self,” and beyond Western communitarianism that are fundamentally still individualist in approach, ubuntu/umunthu grounds moral assessment in the promotion of communal harmony and restorative social practices and justice. In law, governance, and development, ubuntu prioritizes reconciliation, dignity, hospitality, and consensus, interpreting rights through duties of care. Musopole’s (2021) umunthu articulates these claims theologically, since human beings are created in the image and likeness of the Creator (Imago Dei), thus casting communal love and justice as the heart of true humanity and the basis for social repair.

Ubuntu as a Southern African philosophical concept and moral worldview, therefore, emphasizes the primacy of community, relationality, and shared humanity in the constitution of personhood and moral life. In both Xhosa and Zulu, this is expressed thus: “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” (a person is a person through other persons). Ubuntu underscores the interdependence and interconnectedness of individuals within a collective (humanity and the rest of creation), advancing a communitarian ethos where selfhood is inseparable from social bonds of humanity and the environment. John Mbiti (1969) articulated this ethos in, “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am” – highlighting the ontological priority of community over the individual. In this communitarian theoretical framework, ubuntu resists radical individualism by affirming that human flourishing is realized through social connectedness, reciprocity, and care for others. It promotes the view that ethical responsibility is inherently relational, grounding justice, leadership, and governance in communal well-being rather than individual self-interest (Tutu, 1999; Metz, 2011). Ramose (1999) developed ubuntu as both a philosophy of being and a moral theory, positioning it as foundational to African epistemology and ethics. Michael Eze (2010) interprets ubuntu as a dialogical ethic rooted in mutual recognition, dignity, and compassion, while Thaddeus Metz (2007, 2011) frames ubuntu as a moral theory of communal harmony and solidarity, offering it as a distinctive African contribution to global ethics.

Ramathate Dolamo (2013) argues that the notion of ubuntu promotes not onlycommunal relations but also interactions between individuals and their respective communities as an expression of their spirituality of being interconnected and interdependent. Sinentlanhla Sithulisiwe Chisale (2020) and I, Fulata Moyo (2023), reiterate that ubuntu in its very essence should promote equality and justice, as people are not defined according to their social identification of gender, race, class, age, different abilities, or any other dichotomy. They have a personhood as moral agents as well as dignity as imago Dei but the reality of kyriarchy – a term from the ancient Greek word for ‘lord/master’ that extends patriarchy to encompass and connect all structures of oppression and privilege (Fiorenza, 1992) – shaping relationships and societal systems sometimes permeates even the ubuntu ethos. Therefore, when I refer to myself as a feminist ethicist of ubuntu, I not only offer a feminist critique against the possible tendencies of patriarchal connotations in the ubuntu ethos – the privileging of male ways of being. I also emphasize ubuntu’s potential to decolonize the biases of feminist ethics that privilege the Western approaches which emphasize individualism and abstract theorizing through ubuntu’s indigenous preference for relationship, experience and community. So, yes, I am because we are!

References

Chisale, Sinenhlanhla S. (2020). Politics of the Body, Fear and Ubuntu: Proposing an African Women’s Theology of Disability. HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 76(3), 1-10.

Dolamo, R. (2013), Botho/Ubuntu: The Heart of African Ethics. Scriptura, 112(1).

Eze, M. O. (2010). Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan.

Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African Religions and Philosophy. Heinemann.

Metz, T. (2007). Toward an African Moral Theory. Journal of Political Philosophy, 15(3), 321–341.

Metz, T. (2011). Ubuntu as a Moral Theory and Human Rights in South Africa. African Human Rights Law Journal, 11(2), 532–559.

Moyo, F. L. (2023). Child Marriage, the Untold Story of My Mother, and the Church in Africa: A Feminist Ethics of Ubuntu. In D. F. Womack & R. C. Barreto (Eds.), Alterity and the Evasion of Justice: Explorations of the “Other” in World Christianity, Vol. 5, pp. 121–142. Augsburg Fortress.

Musopole, A. (2021) Umunthu Theology: An Introduction. Mzuni Press.

Ramose, M. B. (1999). African Philosophy through Ubuntu. Mond Books.

Tutu, D. (1999). No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday.

Tutu, D. (2010). Made for Goodness: And Why This Makes All the Difference. Rider/Harper Collins Publishers.