The autobiographical journey has ended. But some of the questions it raised have not.
The previous reflection ended by drawing attention to an absence in the story and asking whether enough had been told. Perhaps that is where the autobiography should remain. What interests me now are some of the questions that emerged from the journey.
One of them has been present for much longer than I realised.
Looking back at the autobiography, the tension between the “I”, “them” and “we” appears throughout much of the journey. Family, extended family, people who helped me, people I helped, and the village that raised me repeatedly brought me back to one question:
Where does the “I” end, and where does the “we” begin?
Post 38, I, Them and We, had already brought this question into the open when I asked whether our willingness to help others should depend on whether those people would do the same for us.
The night before, I had decided that Part 2 of The Philosophy of a Village Boy would begin by taking that question further.
I would begin with Ubuntu.
So when I stopped working on the blog that evening, the direction was already clear.
Part 2 would begin by asking:
What does Ubuntu actually mean?
Then, before I returned to work on the post, something interesting happened.
Ubuntu Arrived in a Comment
Mathapelo commented on Post 38.
Her answer to my question was no. Helping another person, she argued, should not be treated like an investment from which we expect a future return.
The person we help may never be the person who later helps us. Someone else might.
And the person we helped may eventually help somebody else.
She described it as a circle in which people help one another in different ways.
She called it Ubuntu.
The timing caught my attention, particularly because this post was already going to be about Ubuntu.
The comment did not create the question.
The question was already waiting.
Then, before I returned to it, somebody independently brought Ubuntu into a discussion that had started nine posts earlier.
Once again, I found myself facing questions I have already wrestled with in this journey.
Was it simply coincidence?
It could have been.
Post 38 was already about the “I”, “them” and “we”, so Ubuntu was not a strange concept for a reader to introduce.
But why did the comment arrive at precisely the time when I was preparing to explore Ubuntu?
I do not know.
I cannot claim divine intervention merely because the timing interests me. But recognising that coincidence is a possible explanation does not require me to pretend that I did not notice the timing.
Perhaps it was coincidence.
Perhaps it was something more.
I simply do not know.
Carry It Forward
Mathapelo’s description of Ubuntu as a circle reminded me of something that happened later in my professional journey.
When I eventually upgraded my professional registration, I needed someone to act as my mentor and ultimately sign off my application.
She was not the first person I approached.
The first person was making the process complicated. It increasingly appeared that getting the application signed off would take considerable time and effort, if it happened at all.
I eventually approached someone else in the Department and asked whether she would be willing to act as my mentor.
She agreed.
When the process was eventually completed, and I thanked her for helping me, her response was simple:
Carry it forward. Do the same for the next person.
She was not asking me to repay her.
She was asking me not to allow the help to end with me.
That principle had appeared elsewhere in my journey too.
The person who helped me obtain a PhD scholarship expected nothing from me in return. Her interest was in seeing young people progress in their careers. At one stage, she had even expressed on her LinkedIn profile her interest in helping young people progress professionally.
Neither person was helping me because I had previously helped them.
There was no debt being created that I was expected to repay personally.
Perhaps that is what makes Mathapelo’s circle so interesting.
“You helped me, therefore I should help you” is direct reciprocity.
But “someone helped me, therefore, when I can, I should help someone else” is something different.
The help moves forward.
And perhaps the “we” becomes larger.
Did I Live Ubuntu Before I Could Explain It?
When I look back at the village where I grew up, I think I encountered some of these ideas long before I tried to understand them philosophically.
Children did not exist entirely within their immediate households.
They continually encountered other adults in the village.
If neighbours or other adults saw children being naughty, disrespectful, or doing something they knew they were not supposed to be doing, those adults could call them to order.
They could tell them to stop.
They could demand an apology.
And if they knew whose children they were, there was always the warning that could quickly change behaviour:
“I will tell your parents.”
That mattered.
Children therefore had reasons to behave around adults who were not their parents.
The neighbour did not become the parent. The parents’ responsibility did not disappear.
But the responsibility for maintaining acceptable behaviour did not necessarily stop at the household boundary either.
Perhaps that gives practical meaning to the familiar expression:
It takes a village to raise a child.
There was an “I”, but the “I” existed within a “we”.
The “We” Appeared in Good Times and Dark Times
The village also came together around important moments in people’s lives.
When neighbours had weddings, parties or other functions, neighbouring women could assist with food preparation and cooking.
They could help clean and prepare for the function beforehand and assist with cleaning afterwards.
Sometimes people would even bring their own utensils, tables and chairs for the hosting household to use.
Importantly, this is not merely something I remember from childhood.
It is still being practised.
And even during the darker moments of family life, the village could come together.
When a family lost a loved one, the death affected the bereaved household most directly, but responding to that loss did not necessarily remain the responsibility of that household alone.
Neighbours and relatives came together.
People assisted with food preparation and other practical arrangements.
People gathered around the bereaved family.
The loss remained the family’s loss, but responding to it could become part of “our” responsibility.
Perhaps that is another expression of Ubuntu.
Another household’s difficulty did not always belong entirely to “them”.
Under particular circumstances, it became something that concerned “us”.
Even the Land Created Relationships
The relationship between the “I” and the “we” extended even into how people used land.
A household wanting a farming plot, called a tsimu in Tshivenda, could approach the relevant community leader and request land for cultivation.
Once the farming plot had been demarcated, cultivating it became the responsibility of that household.
Yet even something as apparently individual as cultivating your own field depended on other people respecting certain responsibilities.
The farming plots were not fenced.
They did not need to be.
During the growing season, people herding livestock understood that cattle and other animals should not be allowed to enter somebody else’s farming plot and damage the maize and other crops.
The farmer was responsible for cultivating the field.
The herder had a responsibility to control the livestock.
After harvesting, the relationship changed again.
Cattle could enter the fields and feed on some of the crop residues and vegetation that remained.
So land, livestock and cultivation continually placed households in relationships with one another.
The “I” had rights, but those rights depended partly on the behaviour of the “we”.
Perhaps Ubuntu was therefore not something people stopped their ordinary lives to practise.
Perhaps elements of it were embedded in ordinary life itself.
But Does Ubuntu Disappear When the Village Develops?
This is where the question becomes more difficult.
As villages increasingly develop, does Ubuntu disappear with the old ways of village life?
I am not convinced that the answer can simply be yes.
Some of the communal practices I remember from the village are still being practised.
And some of the strongest examples of what I might now interpret as Ubuntu happened to me outside the village.
Someone helped me obtain a PhD scholarship.
Someone else agreed to become my professional mentor when another route was proving unnecessarily difficult.
When I thanked her, she told me to carry the help forward to the next person.
Those experiences occurred in modern educational and professional environments.
This suggests that Ubuntu may be bigger than the village.
It may even be bigger than race, gender or ethnicity.
Ubuntu may have been named, articulated and deeply embedded in African societies, but the human behaviour it attempts to describe may not belong exclusively to Africans.
Someone does not necessarily need to know the word Ubuntu to recognise another person’s humanity, help that person progress and expect nothing personally in return.
Perhaps African societies gave a particular name and philosophical expression to something humans everywhere are capable of practising.
If that is true, leaving the village does not necessarily mean leaving Ubuntu behind.
Perhaps Ubuntu can travel.
Development Is Not the Enemy
Development itself should therefore not automatically be treated as the enemy of Ubuntu.
Electricity matters.
Running water matters.
Sanitation matters.
Roads matter.
Education matters.
Healthcare matters.
Telecommunications matter.
Employment and economic opportunities matter.
I am a beneficiary of many of these things.
Education took the Village Boy into universities, science, GIS, research and professional life.
The question cannot therefore be whether villages should remain frozen in the past.
Nor should poverty and hardship be romanticised merely because difficult conditions sometimes forced people to depend more heavily on one another.
Instead, perhaps we should ask:
As the village develops, which parts of Ubuntu remain, which evolve, and which disappear?
And even that question may require us first to answer something more fundamental.
What exactly is Ubuntu?
Is it helping someone without expecting repayment?
Is it carrying forward help that we once received?
Is it neighbours sharing some responsibility for the children growing up around them?
Is it people coming together when another household experiences death?
Is it neighbours helping one another prepare for weddings, funerals and other functions?
Is it the responsibility of a herder to ensure that livestock do not destroy another household’s crops?
Is it the recognition that another person’s difficulty does not always belong entirely to “them”?
And if these things can also happen in a university, a government department, a city or among people who have never heard the word Ubuntu, how should Ubuntu itself be understood?
Perhaps it is too early to answer.
That is why Part 2 begins with the question rather than the conclusion.
The autobiography told the story of the Village Boy.
Now the questions that emerged from that journey can be examined more directly.
The “I”, “them” and “we” are still here.
And perhaps understanding Ubuntu requires us to understand the relationships between all three.
What does Ubuntu actually mean?
Join the conversation
Do you think Ubuntu belongs particularly to African communal life, or is Ubuntu an African name for something humans everywhere are capable of practising? And as villages develop, does Ubuntu disappear with the old ways of village life, or does it simply take different forms?
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