Spirit Of Ubuntu Quotes

We call this the spirit of Ubuntu, that profound African sense that we are human only through the humanity of other human beings.

Ubuntu is part of our culture Ubuntu was taught at home Ubuntu was taught in schools Ubuntu was taught in the community Ubuntu was taught in church. Today Ubuntu is nowhere to be found. Because we think being civil, educated, cool, and modern means forgetting who we are and what we are. Leaving behind our culture and heritage. Before we dress nice. Ubuntu is the root and heart of our heritage and that we need to celebrate every day. The world is getting messed up, dark and a bad place, because we lack Ubuntu. We all need the spirit of Ubuntu in us and that is our heritage.

A comprehensive ancient African world view based on the values of intense humanness, caring, sharing, respect, compassion, and associated values, ensuring a happy and qualitative human community life in the spirit of family. Broodryk anticipates our next question: “It may be asked whether this notion is unique,” he writes, “since all cultures ascribe basically to these positive values.” He’s right, of course—if we think of ubuntu as, say, “human interconnectedness,” there are parallels in Buddhism, or the Hindu concept of dharma. The difference, he says, is that in Africa “these values are practiced on a much deeper level. It is about a real passionate living of humanity, as if humanity is the primary reason for living above all other concerns.

Umteto wesintu prescribes five amabanga okuphila (phases of becoming) as the stages by which to attain ubuntu. These are birth or the introduction of experience, growth or opening up and outward; and the adaptation to the demands of growth, maturity, or the highest point of achievement. Then there is the decline, the winding down of experience and death of the conclusion of experience for the person. Each phase is the moment of living out a principle; babyhood expresses the excellence which inheres in the person. During infancy the child grows; opening outward characterises his personality; he needs all the latitude he can have to learn and grow and develop his personality. At the height of his power he identifies himself with his neighbor to project society into the future or to guarantee its survival. Decline is important, too, because it enables the person to reassess his life and to give it meaning; he opens himself to all experience and to all persons; he responds to the call of mutuality. Death ferries him to the world of spirit-forms and death in the latter is rebirth into the physical world. The person, like all creation, is always moving between 'death' and 'birth' and vice versa. The cycle has no beginning and no end; it can neither be caused nor terminated because the person is a cell of the infinite consciousness. Ubuntu denies that the person owes his existence to any power outside of himself. The consciousness does not create him; he is its constituent organ. Since an infinity is by definition a unity, the consciousness cannot be other than whole; nothing can be taken away from it and nothing can be added to it; it cannot be whole if the person is taken out of it; it needs him as much in order to be a whole as he needs it to survive. It is this element of mutuality which binds the consciousness and the person and which keeps the cosmic order a unity and gives rise to the mutuality principle. . . . God is the cell of the consciousness infinitised, while the human being is God personalised.

abandon this community you’ve built for one.” This is what’s at the heart of Kooser’s poem. The objects giving us the report of what took place in this abandoned house are speaking the language of ubuntu, each of them saying, “I am because we are.” And it’s the essence of Paul’s words of wisdom and counsel to the Romans: “Remember, I am because we are. Pretending just won’t do. Like the Son is to the Father is to the Holy Spirit,

To believe that it is fair to punish an entire race or gender for the actions of a few individuals from that race or gender, who benefited a small group connected to the corrupt and guilty members of that race or gender, one must be ready to accept this reasoning when it affects them personally. We are after all Africans who believe in the spirit of Ubuntu, reciprocity, universally interpreted as the golden rule. If you believe in penalizing every white person for the actions of a few white politicians and their associates who have benefited from those actions, then it is only fair for you, as a black person, to also accept responsibility for all the corruption within the ANC, given that the ANC supposedly represents the black majority. Whether you benefited is immaterial, as is the case for government-sanctioned affirmative action policies. We know it was a minority of white people who supported apartheid because the 1992 referendum to end apartheid was supported by 68,73 percent of the white population that voted.

If the meaning of the mountain range overlooking the home’s peace is called the Quteniqua Mountains, which is rally made up of the Langeberg Range (northeast of Worcester) and the Tsitsikamma Mountains (east-west along The Garden Route), and if the collective name of the mountain range references the idea of honey, the honey that can be found at Amanda and Lena’s home starts with kindness, a type of kindness the touches the world’s core understanding of compassion. “I want to give you a used copy of my favorite book that I think helps to explain what exactly I love about this area. Out of all of her books, this is probably one of the least favorite books based off readers’ choice, yet it is my favorite book because I think it truly understands the spirit of this area.” Amanda handed me the book. “Da-lene Mat-thee,” I said. “Is that correct…” Before I could finish, she had already answered my question. “Yes, the author that I had spoken about earlier today. Although she is an Afrikaans author, this book is in English. The Mulberry Forest. My favorite character is Silas Miggel, the headstrong Afrikaans man who didn’t want to have the Italian immigrants encroaching onto his part of the forest.” She paused for a second before resuming, “Yet, he’s the one who came to their rescue when the government turned a blind eye on the hardships of the Italian immigrants. He’s the one who showed kindness toward them even when he didn’t feel that way in his heart. That’s what kindness is all about, making time for our follow neighbors because it’s the right thing to do, full stop. Silas is the embodiment of what I love about the people of this area. It is also what I love about my childhood home growing up in the shantytown. The same thread of tenacity can be found in both places. So, when you read about Silas, think of me because he represents the heart of both Knysna and the Storms River Valley. This area contains a lot of clones just like him, the heartbeat of why this area still stands today.” That’s the kind of hope that lights up the sky. The Portuguese called the same mountain range Serra de Estrellla or Mountain of the Star… If we want to change the world, we should follow in the Quteniqua Mountain’s success, and be a reminder that human benevolence is a star that lights up the sky of any galaxy, the birthplace of caring. As we drove away, for a second, I thought I heard the quiet whispers from Dalene Matthee’s words when she wrote in Fiela’s Child: “If he had to wish, what would he wish for, he asked himself. What was there to wish for…a wish asked for the unattainable. The impossible.” And that’s what makes this area so special, a space grounded in the impossibility held together through single acts of human kindness, the heart of the Garden Route’s greatest accomplishment. A story for all times…simply called, Hospitality, the Garden Route way…

One might go on to say that perhaps justice fails to be done only if the concept we entertain of justice is retributive justice, whose chief goal is to be punitive, so that the wronged party is really the state, something impersonal, which has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense.