Definition:
Ubuntu is a Nguni word which has no direct translation into English, but is used to describe a particular African worldview in which people can only find fulfilment through interacting with other people. Thus is represents a spirit of kinship across both race and creed which united mankind to a common purpose.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has said "Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language…It is to say. 'My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours'…"1
1 No Future Without Forgiveness: A Personal Overview of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission , Desmond Tutu, © 2000.
