South Africa and Ubuntu, a brief overview


During the Examining Ubuntu conference, you will see examples of reconciliation and interconnectedness playing out around the world. Many of the references, however, will tie into the place of origin of the term – South Africa. The following overview will help explain some of the terms, people, organizations, and events that provide the backdrop for a discussion of ubuntu in South Africa.


Apartheid and the Struggle

After tens of thousands of years of inhabitance by the pastoral and hunter-gatherer Khoisan people, and centuries by the then-majority Bantu speakers, the Cape was first settled by the Dutch in 1652 as a refreshment station. The colony finally landed in the hands of the British in 1820. Under the British, the slaves which the Dutch had brought over were emancipated in the 1830s, but both these and the native people remained in a state of political subservience. This segregation only worsened when the Afrikaner (descendents of Dutch and speakers of Afrikaans) National Party came to power in 1948, beginning its policy of apartheid (separation of the races). At this time, the entire population was required to register by race, and racially-zoned areas were set up in the cities. Soon after, the resistance or struggle was begun, led by the African National Congress (ANC), and taking the form of passive resistance and demonstration. These demonstrations were often met with violent reaction by the government, such as in Sharpeville in 1960, when 67 anti-pass law demonstrators were killed by police.

This reaction led several organizations to take up arms in the struggle against apartheid, including the ANC through its military wing: Umkhonto we Sizwe. Other movements with varying and often conflicting ideologies, such as the Pan-Africanist Congress and the United Democratic Front, also involved themselves in the struggle, and the international community put pressure on the South African government through embargos and boycotts. When the ANC was banned by the government, its leaders, including Nelson Mandela, were imprisoned on Robben Island, just off of Cape Town’s shores. Amidst continued efforts through the 1980s to make the country “ungovernable” in order to necessitate regime change, incarcerated leaders such as Mandela retained both symbolic and political power. When the government began to cave in to internal and external pressures, the still-imprisoned Mandela entered into negotiations for a transition to democracy. Mandela was released in 1990 after 27 years in prison. In 1994, the ANC won the first nonracial election and Mandela was sworn in as President. The ANC continues to hold the majority in Parliament, and recently appointed the third President of the New South Africa, Jacob Zuma.





Racial Terminology in South Africa

Throughout the apartheid regime, there were mechanisms in place to determine a person’s racial classification. These methods, which included “the pencil test” (putting a pencil in one’s hair and seeing if it falls out) often led to arbitrary results, and many people each year were officially recorded as “changing” races. The primary classifications used by the government were white (sometimes called European), black (or Native, or African, referring primarily to people of Bantu origin), coloured (referring to the people who descended from colonial slaves as well as the first indigenous people in the area, the Khoisan), and Indian (there is a sizeable Indian population in South Africa, especially on the East Coast). The term “black” was re-appropriated by the Black Consciousness movement, beginning in the 1960s under the leadership of Steve Biko, to refer broadly to a people united under oppression (this would include both Africans and Coloureds).


Ubuntu and the TRC

The African concept of Ubuntu is encapsulated in the Zulu proverb "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu": A person is a person through other people. One of the foremost proponents of this philosophy is Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Desmond Tutu, who chaired South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
In 1994, South Africa transitioned from the apartheid regime to its first democratically elected government. After over three centuries of white minority rule through oppression and exclusion of the black majority, a peaceful transition seemed impossible to many. However, the inspired leadership of the new government under Nelson Mandela largely avoided the civil unrest and violence which have characterized freedom-struggle and regime-change elsewhere.
The TRC was a key feature of this peaceful transition. In an effort to achieve restorative justice, to bring about closure and forgiveness rather than enmity and retribution, the TRC offered amnesty for politically motivated actions in exchange for a full disclosure of facts and details which had been shrouded in secrecy for years.
The TRC process raises many difficult questions about culpability and justice. Examining Ubuntu will explore these questions and their relation to social justice issues in South Africa and beyond. We are honored to present two participants in the TRC, Linda Biehl and Ntobeko Peni, as keynote speakers.


Further reading:

Leonard Thompson: A History of South Africa. Yale University Press, 2000.
Nelson Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Macdonald Purnell, 1995.
Antjie Krog: Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. Times Books, 1999.