We Cannot Be Self-Made

Author Mungi Ngomane explores the lessons of ubuntu she learned from her grandfather, Bishop Desmond Tutu (1931–2021): 

If we are able to see ourselves in other people, our experience in the world will inevitably be a richer, kinder, more connected one. If we look at others and see ourselves reflected back, we inevitably treat people better.  

This is ubuntu.   

Ubuntu shouldn’t be confused with kindness, however. Kindness is something we might try to show more of, but ubuntu goes much deeper. It recognizes the inner worth of every human being—starting with yourself….   

Ubuntu tells us we are only who we are thanks to other people. Of course we have our parents to credit for bringing us into the world, but beyond this there are hundreds—if not thousands—of relationships, big and small, along the way, which teach us something about life and how to live it well. Our parents or guardians teach us how to walk and talk. Our teachers at school teach us how to read and write. A mentor might help us find fulfilling work. A lover might teach us emotional lessons, both good and bad—we learn from all experiences. Every interaction will have brought us to where we are today. [1] 

Theologian Dr. Michael Battle reflects on the spirituality of ubuntu:  

[Ubuntu] is a difficult worldview for many Westerners who tend to understand self as over and against others—or as in competition with others. In a Western worldview, interdependence may easily be confused with codependence, a pathological condition in which people share a dependence on something that is not life-giving, such as alcohol or drugs. Ubuntu, however, is about symbiotic and cooperative relationships—neither the parasitic and destructive relationships of codependence nor the draining and alienating relationships of competition.  

Perhaps Desmond Tutu … put it best when he said:  

A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished. [2] … 

Our planet cannot survive if we define our identity only through competition. If I know myself as strong only because someone else is weak, if I know myself as a black person only because someone else is white, then my identity depends on a perpetual competition that only leaves losers. If I know myself as a man only by dominating women, if I know myself as a Christian only because someone else is going to hell, then both my masculinity and my Christianity are devoid of content.  

Rather than reinforcing competitive ways of knowing self, Ubuntu offers a way of discovering self-identity through interdependence. As such, it is possible to argue that my very salvation is dependent on yours—radical stuff for Western ears to hear, yet vital to the survival of the earth. [3]  

References:  
[1] Mungi Ngomane, Everyday Ubuntu: Living Better Together, the African Way (New York: Harper Design, 2020), 19, 21.   

[2] Desmond Mpilo Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 31.  

[3] Michael Battle, Ubuntu: I in You and You in Me (New York: Seabury Books, 2009), 2, 6–7. 

Image credit and inspiration: Georg Arthur Pflueger, Untitled (detail), 2022, photo, Germany, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We are individual pieces in an intricately interconnected weave of reality; together we make a whole.