Chic African Culture Africa Factbook

No child can be born in safety where it is hung

Ubuntu is a centuries old African philosophy meaning community. Ubuntu has no party lines.


When Ubuntu African community organizations come together they could accomplish great things such as solving the black mass incarceration problems and its effects on children left behind without familial role models and love and support of both parents.

These children are left to fend for themselves becoming fader for crime organizations and thus repeating the cycle of jail, lease to the streets and back to jail again. Ubuntu's meaning and philosophy is I am what I am because of who we are has to be put into action or no child can safely live in this world. Ubuntu is an African humanism model meaning the group is above that of the individual.

Ubuntu African Meaning

What is Ubuntu

Nelson Mandela’s philosophy of Ubuntu was expressed as a parable;

A traveler through a country would stop at a village and he did not have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food and attend him.

That is one aspect of Ubuntu, but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not enrich themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?

Popularized in the 1960’s, Ubuntu worldview explains the way someone thinks about the world, not as a selfish individual but the group is above that of the individual.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu stated Ubuntu is the essence of being human. Ubuntu speaks particularly about the fact that you cannot exist as a human being in isolation. It speaks about our interconnectedness.

You cannot be human all by yourself, and when you have this quality – Ubuntu – you are known for your generosity. We think of ourselves far too frequently as just individuals, separated from one another, whereas you are connected and what you do affects the whole World. When you do well, it spreads out; it is for the whole of humanity.”

The person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, based from a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished when others are tortured or oppressed.

Ubuntu is a Xhosa word that generally translates as "a person is a person through other persons" is heard beyond the borders of Africa. The 21st century has witnessed the deterioration concerning Ubuntu.

No child can be born in safety where it is hung

What is an Ubuntu Community Organization?

While there has been disintegration in neighborhood life especially in the black downtown sections of our largest cities, the neighborhood has not become obsolete. It has morphed itself into a form of an unbreakable spirit.

However, the vitality of the neighborhood is being reconstructed through Ubuntu. The function of the neighborhood and social evolution in today's complicated society is being transformed by the creation of nonprofit organizations whose roots are in Ubuntu.

A community organization is itself a community of neighborhood people. While the government machinery provides an instrument of national policy it does not furnish an opportunity for those people who do not rely upon partisan newspapers, magazines, paid political bosses and pulpit puppets to think and speak for them. Ubuntu has no partition lines.

Many subjects discussed by groups at community meetings may not be solved by casting a ballot or passing a resolution. The solution is sometimes found only any action by people themselves and frequently becomes necessary to call upon established community organizations for assistance these organizations bring people together into intelligent and personal relationships with their communities.

A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others

Community organizations with Ubuntu as a base model are a fulfillment of democracy itself. The organized community opens the way to active social service of every member. The individual is not more important than the group nor is the group more important than the individual is, they are one.

Ubuntu is not subject to control by the majority it is an all-inclusive concept. One does not become a member by joining, birthright, or by neither residence nor does Ubuntu divide a neighborhood politically, religiously, fraternally, socially or economically; it unites. This concept offers a fertile place for the development of the elusive Utopia all races seek. It holds within its grasp the perennial promise a peaceful united society.

Among the local institution, there are schools, churches, businesses, clubs, athletic venues, all supported by the neighborhood. Ubuntu model as a well-organized neighborhood will stimulate the individual and unites separate units as a whole. Black communities are no different from all of America, local and international players in the business of crime plague all communities in regards to drugs, alcohol, and tobacco.

Critics will say Ubuntu as a model for community organizations will not work because when the pastor needs big money, informal community banks like the number runner or gangsters can be called upon to give for the community. They may say that before we throw stones at the individual destroying the community we have to realize that this is about economics in this life, survival

Mass incarceration is the opposite of Ubuntu
Mass incarceration is the opposite of Ubuntu
Mass incarceration is the opposite of Ubuntu

Black neighborhoods using Ubuntu as a model for their community organizations would effectively become self-governing. Among the neighborhood, city, state and national agencies and movements in which the organized community will establish a functional relationship would give rise to personal responsibility, community awareness, and collective interest.

Mass incarceration means that the black community has a very high rate of incarceration historically comparatively. The rate of incarceration is now about five times higher than it was historically; nowhere in the world is incarceration as high for the black man as it is in the United States.

High rates of exposure to the criminal justice system affect more black men who were born in the late 1970s who grew up through the American prison boom of the 1990s. There are 1.2 million African American children with their parents in prison, which is about 1 and 9. Research shows that children who experience parental incarceration have behavioral problems such as depressive symptoms, acting out.

How to respond to that problem of the deprivation of liberty for a group of people whose liberty in the United States was never truly established, to begin with, is to turn to the Ubuntu as a model for a community organization, a person is a person through other persons.

Ubuntu African philosophy is very close to the heart of the utopian black community, we are all interconnected and when we live in the Spirit of Ubuntu because when we do, we are open, affirming, and compassionate to others. 

Community makes people happy and happiness equals productive citizens. It is the lack of this view that the people acting in their own self-interest are not bound by the wisdom in the power of community. Can you imagine starting every single day not to selfish inner voice but to the call of the community?

Ubuntu African connection
Ubuntu African connection

It is not the same day a leaf falls that it rots. - African Proverb

A prisoner is treated as one absent. - African Proverb

From a calf an ox grows up. - African Proverb

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