What is Ubuntu?

Global Horizons Inc. is now offering racial reconciliation training, for churches, schools and community groups. We call it Ubuntu Training.

Ubuntu is an African concept derived from the Nguni language which means the essence of being human as created by God. In its original form it is “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu which means a person is a person through other people. According to Desmond Tutu, it speaks of the fact that “my humanity is caught up and inextricably bound up in yours. We therefore cannot exist in our full humanity if others do not. Barbera Nussbaum (2003), suggests that Ubuntu is “the capacity in African culture to express compassion, reciprocity, dignity, harmony, and humanity [in the interests of a deep human bond]”. It is as scripture points us to “love your neighbor as yourself”. (Matt 19:19).

A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm, generous, willing to share, willing to be vulnerable and affirming of others, and feels that the belong to the greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished and oppressed. (Tutu, 2000).

We have chosen the concept Ubuntu as the philosophy for our training ministry because it encapsulates our desire to rebuild a fractured community, to bring us back to the kingdom ethic of Jesus Christ which is characterized by love, compassion, belonging, acceptance, sharing of resources and a deep regard for the dignity or human value (created in God’s image) of our human community, irrespective of racial, ethnic, cultural, gender or other social differences.

Ubuntu is more than just accepting those closest to us but extends to those we see as “other”, the stranger as demonstrated in Christ’s example in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), the foreigner, the immigrant, the racially oppressed. It is a command to love selflessly and demonstrate a new attitude towards a stranger [the other] and to overcome structural divisions imposed upon us through economic, political and ideological divisions. Jesus acknowledges that there are victimized strangers and that we are to show care and consideration for them, treating them as our own. Our humanness and kingdom values are expressed in how we interact and regard each other.

-Dr. Leon Rodrigues, CEO of Global Horizons and founder of Ubuntu Training

Learn more about Ubuntu Training.