His understanding of humanity has influenced people around the globe
ARCHBISHOP Emeritus Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu’s 86th birthday today is a good occasion to reflect on the man’s contributions to South African society and global thought.
I do so as a philosopher and in the light of ubuntu, the Southern African (specifically Nguni) word for humanness that is often used to encapsulate sub-Saharan moral ideals.
An ubuntu ethic is often expressed with the maxim, “a person is a person through other persons”.
In plain English, this does not say much.
But one idea that indigenous Africans often associate with this maxim is that your basic aim in life should be to become a real or genuine person. You should strive to realise your higher, human nature, in a word to exhibit ubuntu.
How is one to do that? “Through other persons”, which is shorthand for prizing communal or harmonious relationships with them. For many Southern African intellectuals, communion or harmony consists of identifying with and exhibiting solidarity towards others, in other words, enjoying a sense of togetherness, cooperating and helping people – out of sympathy and for their own sake.
Tutu sums up his understanding of how to exhibit ubuntu as: “I participate, I share.”
Tutu is well-known for having invoked an ubuntu ethic to evaluate South African society, and he can take substantial credit for having made the term familiar to politicians, activists and scholars around the world.
Tutu criticised the National Party, which formalised apartheid, and its supporters for having prized discord, the opposite of harmony.
Apartheid not only prevented “races” from identifying with each other or exhibiting solidarity with one another. It went further by having one “race” subordinate and harm others.
In Tutu’s words, apartheid made people “less human” for their failure to participate on an evenhanded basis and to share power, wealth, land, opportunities and themselves.
One of Tutu’s more striking, contested claims is that apartheid damaged not only black people, but also white people. Although most white people became well off as a result of apartheid, they did not become as morally good, or human, as they could have.
As is well known, Tutu maintained that, by ubuntu, democratic South Africa was right to deal with apartheid-era political crimes by seeking reconciliation or restorative justice.
If “social harmony is for us the summum bonum – the greatest good”, then the primary aim when dealing with wrongdoing – as ones who hold African values – should be to establish harmonious relationships between wrongdoers and victims. From this perspective, punishment