In the flurry of tributes to Desmond Tutu, I came across a quote from him about "ubuntu." This is an important concept for understanding his work. The definition attributed to Tutu says that ubuntu means "my humanity is inextricably bound up with yours."
Church music throughout Sub-Saharan Africa has a basic call and response pattern. But as a song progresses, the response is not rote but modulated and adapted. I remember a particular prayer meeting in a suburb of Durban, South Africa where the singing was in English--people from several language groups were present. Listening, I heard that the leader was sometimes behind the rest of us. At that moment, I glimpsed "ubuntu."
Understanding Desmond Tutu--his engagement in peace and justice work, his deep commitment to reconciliation--requires an understanding of "ubuntu." He didn't do the work because he was a saint. He approached the government of South Africa during apartheid, approached White people who worked for the regime, knowing that his humanity was inextricably bound up with theirs.
In his writings about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I remember his commitment to healing relationships so that the country could heal. Some people thought this meant getting off the hook. That was not the case. Perpetrators who came before the commission had to acknowledge what they had done that betrayed their humanity and that of others in order to gain amnesty. This helped them to change the way they lived, to become more humane, more human.
Victims had the opportunity to tell their stories, to unburden themselves from the pain, anger, humiliation. Victims were given the opportunity not to punish those who had hurt them, but to treat their oppressors as human beings. This did not mean glossing over the wrong but naming it as torture, as inhumane, as unjust. That naming helped free them from their own history. That naming also opened a path for the oppressor to recover their humanity. Not that the victim was responsible for the torturers' redemption, but because their humanity was bound up together. Because the future of the country required living together in a new way, opening that pathway benefited both.
The message from the World Health Organization about vaccinating the world makes the same kind of point. The north is working on getting people booster shots. But most of the global south has not had a first dose. As the virus runs wild in these counties, the risk of new variants increases. Our health is inextricably bound up with theirs. We need to understand and act according to ubuntu.
The same concept needs to ground the process of reconciliation in Canada. We need to build new relationships with indigenous peoples because it is right, because of historic injustice, but also because settler's humanity is inextricably bound up with indigenous humanity. Acting as if Canada is a just country when so many communities don't have a decent water supply makes each Canadian blind. All of Canada will be more whole, more human, when this injustice is solved.
If we can walk by homeless people in Owen Sound without looking at them, we are unjust, uncaring. If we look with disdain at the people who live in the crappy rooms above the stores on second avenue, we are not humane. The housing crisis in our area is real. House prices have jumped. Affordable apartments are hard to come by. And even pre-pandemic, good jobs were not easy to find. People don't live in squalid conditions by choice. It is a necessity. All of us are responsible. Acknowledging that their living conditions matters to me is what ubuntu requires.
In a 2004 article, Tutu wrote about an activist, Malusi Mpumlwana. This young man told him that during his frequent stints in detention, when security police routinely tortured him, he would think, "These are God's children and yet they are behaving as animals. They need us to help them recover the humanity they have lost." When Nelson Mandela and companions arrived at Robben Island prison and the guards tried to herd them like cattle, Mandela insisted on walking with dignity, insisted on being treated as a human being. South Africa still has problems, but it was these blacks who lived by ubuntu that saved the country.
Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation
