Ubuntu - What does it mean?

Ubuntu (pronounced oo-BOON-tu) is an African concept of personhood in which the identity of the self is understood to be formed interdependently through community. The word ubuntu comes from the Sub-Saharan languages known as Bantu. Ubuntu is the interdependence of persons for the exercise, development, and fulfillment of their potential to be both individuals and community.


Archbishop Tutu's theology of ubuntu is complex, but ultimately he describes ubuntu as hospitality, an open and welcoming attitude that is willing to share, to be generous and caring. Ubuntu is the development of the kind of character in a person who proves a neighbor to a stranger and welcomes them as friends. Ubuntu forms knowledge that human existence is caught up and inextricably bound up with God's creation and that a solitary human being is a contradiction in terms. "I need other persons," Tutu concludes, "to become a person myself."



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