ubuntu

this evening I went to a panel entitled "Black Rage vs. White Guilt" organized by the student group on campus called Ubuntu. The panel was really very good. I particularly liked the presentations given by Edward Ramsamy and Saladin Ambar.

Ramsamy's presentation touched both mind and soul.


He quoted liberally from a range of writings in the humanities and from the words of Desmond Tutu, one of the four nobel peace laureates from South Africa.

The philosophy of ubuntu is the foundational philosophy of the new South Africa and the African renaissance. In Desmond Tutu's words:

"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.'"

Tutu said that Ubuntu was the gift that Africa was going to give to the world. Yes please please let us accept this gift! How very desperately we are in need of it. Here is Nelson Mandela on "ubuntu".