Practices and discourses of ubuntu: Implications for an African model of disability?

Abstract

BackgroundSouthern African scholars and activists working in disability studies have argued that ubuntu or unhu is a part of their world view.ObjectivesThinking seriously about ubuntu, as a shared collective humanness or social ethics, means to examine how Africans have framed a struggle for this shared humanity in terms of decolonisation and activism.MethodThree examples of applications of ubuntu are given, with two mainly linked to making explicit umaka. Firstly, ubuntu is linked to making visible the invisible inequalities for a common humanity in South Africa. Secondly, it becomes correlated to the expression of environmental justice in West and East African countries.ResultsAn African model of disability that encapsulates ubuntu is correlated to how Africans have illustrated a social ethics of a common humanity in their grassroots struggles against oppression and disablement in the 20th century. Ubuntu also locates disability politically within the wider environment and practices of sustainability which are now important to the post-2105 agenda, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the (UN) Sustainable Development Goals linked to climate change.ConclusionA different kind of political action linked to social justice seems to be evolving in line with ubuntu. This has implications for the future of disability studies.

Core aspects of ubuntu: A systematic review

“…A significant number of studies [5,11,[17][18][19]26,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58] express the idea that ubuntu is a genre of philosophy that one may rightly refer to as African ethics. African ethics is described as a set of values distinctively associated with largely black African people residing in sub-Saharan Africa.…”

“…Consistent with its description as an African ethics, there are a variety of ways in which ubuntu has been described by reviewed studies. They include: African humanism; [9,46] Afro-communitarian moral perspective or ethic; [14,60,61] humanist or communalistic ethic; [57] Afro-communalism; [62] African eco-bio-communitarian outlook; [2] and harmonious monism. [2]…”

“…Rather, authentic personhood/humanness is essentially achieved through others, by relating communally with others, comprising both the world seen by the physical eyes and the spiritual world. [46] One who fails to exhibit humanness/personhood is considered a non-person or an animal. However, one study [83] remarks that '[t]his way of speaking does not mean that wicked or unjust individuals are literally no longer human, namely, no longer the subject of human rights; it means rather that they have failed to exhibit what is valuable about human nature to any significant degree. '…”

Disability studies and development geography: Empirical connections, theoretical resonances, and future directions

“…Disability studies scholars offer alternative models to the pervasive “will to improve” and “ideology of cure.” For example, paralleling moves in development studies toward indigenous knowledge systems and decolonizing thought (Pérez‐Bustos, ), some Southern African scholars and activists have proposed ubuntu as central to an African model of disability (Berghs, ). The philosophy of ubuntu or unhu emphasizes “shared collective humanness and responsibility” and offers a different framing of how disablement emerges: namely, that it “happens when [impairment] becomes a difference predicated as inhuman” or outside of the scope of ukama, “a feeling of relatedness or interdependence” (Berghs, , p. 2). The focus of being left out of interdependent relations contrasts with the emphasis on independence in many minority‐world models.…”

Methodologically Thinking: Doing Disability Research in Ghanaian Cultural Communities

“…In Africa, disability scholars have responded by invoking ubuntu, a Zulu term signifying a communal worldview in which ' a person is a person through other persons' (Shutte 1993: 46). From its Zulu origins, ubuntu has been taken up as a general term for traditional African community, which is assumed to be inclusive and accepting of all community members, including persons with disabilities (Bannink Mbazzi et al 2020;Berghs 2017a;Chataika and McKenzie 2013;Oppenheim 2012). One recent study by Maria Berghs, for example, states that 'African understandings of ubuntu' view disability ' as part of an enabling human diversity' (Berghs 2017a: 4).…”