Ubuntu Ideality: The Foundation of African Compassionate and Humane Living

Abstract

The 21st Century humanity is at the cross-road on where to get peace and peaceful society, despite all the resources at her disposal to make her world a peaceful one. Our survey reveals that the confusion is an outgrowth of jettisoning her traditional humane values under the guise of modernity. This has resulted into a system failure that has affects both our individual and corporate existence adversely. Therefore we are attuned to searching for answer to this state of imbalance that is eclipsing our psycho-spiritual/moral personality. In our inquest for answer, we stumbled at the ‘Ubuntu’ Ideality. Our study reveals that Ubuntu resembles a somewhat ‘Holy-grail’ that binds traditional African people together in an inseparable manner. It defines African philosophy of social/ community living. The ideality takes different names under different African communities, however, in spite of the various names; the underling ideology is the same in all cultures. The central ideology is human-ness, cooperation, compassion and universal brotherhood of all mankind. Here Ubuntu ideality hinges on the basic truth that it is the community that defines the individual and gives people their worth-ness. Ubuntu reflects the deep spiritual truth that humanity share one indivisible essence-one spiritual essence, one planetary life system, one human race and one dependent human community. This paper therefore underscores that if the modern world will harness and adapt this pristine concept found in African traditional values, as a model of relationship that the crisis of the present order will be a history we will all remember with shame and regrets.