The late Pravin Gordhan. (Oupa Nkosi)
The theory of ubuntu is either poorly developed, misunderstood or not understood at all. And its practice has a fair share of extrinsic deficiency. It is extrinsic because there is nothing in the concept of ubuntu that makes it impossible or improbable to practise it — under any circumstances.
It is this theoretical and practical failure of ubuntu that lies beneath the media statement issued by Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), on 13 September 2024, on the death of the former minister. The statement was nothing more or less than a posthumous insult of Pravin Gordhan.
So, what if the theory and practice of ubuntu were conceptualised with a modicum of intellectual rigour to help the Fighters?
This sounds like an entry to the terrain of abstract philosophy, but bear with me.
Let’s begin with “cogito ergo sum”, the expression conceived by French philosopher René Descartes. He was confronting one of the old challenges in philosophy, the mind-body challenge, and whether a human being is real and not just a figment of imagination. “Cogito ergo sum”, said Rene Descartes, concluding that thinking itself was enough proof that he was real. Of course, his way of finding himself led him to Cartesian individualism.
If the EFF were to reason its own identity in a Cartesian fashion — as it does — it would rationally find individualism within its ranks.
Before I support this conclusion, let us agree that there’s nothing African about spitting on the dead. That in itself expels the doer of that deed from the concept of ubuntu, the home-grown philosophy about who we are. Because the EFF has spat on the dead, it is no longer obvious that ubuntu is resident in that political party.
Now, how do we rescue the EFF from its Cartesian tendency to place itself in the centre of the universe? Well, saying the rescue mission is philosophical neither undermines the practicality of ubuntu nor insults the PhDs in the EFF ranks.
We can re-formulate ubuntu for the latter, so that the expression “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” can be construed by the Cartesian mind as meaning, “You are, therefore I am.”
Hopefully this Cartesian rendition of “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” reveals something deeply fundamental about African existence. We cannot grasp it until we understand that the expression “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” is another way of saying, “I would not be, if you were not.” In other words, it is my fellow human beings — not my intellect — that confirms and perpetuates my existence as another human being.
Colloquially, ubuntu is the same fabric from which all of us are cut out. It doesn’t matter if the fabric is spiritual or a concrete principle for cooperation to survive as a group. What matters is that whoever sheds a tear for Pravin Gordhan was cut from the same fabric as him. We mourn the death of Pravin Gordhan because we succumb to authenticity and the nature of the African within us.
Besides that, we should not need to hide our tears from the EFF or any political party. If we thought that we should, that may be a reflection of a deficit in the content of character within a living human being — not the departed.
You are, therefore I am. As a principle, this could be the most African gift to the world. And that’s a good alternative to Cartesian Euro-centrism. A place where we all believe that human beings co-manifest must function better than the mutually assured destruction attitude that defines politics today. I boldly assert, with the backing of history, that European colonialism brought that attitude to Africa.
History tells us that — until recently — genocide was rarely a political end in itself, even in the fiercest African warfare of Mfecane or Difaqane. The Cartesian individualism of the colonial European, coupled with Darwinian selfish attitude, brought most (if not all) of the genocides in Africa. That’s not because of a design flaw in African polities. It’s a basic principle to the effect that we cannot destroy our own reflection, no matter how far it is from us – externally.
But, if philosophy fails the Fighters, we could look to Robert Sobukwe’s political thought. We believe in one race, the human race. His words.
Mzwandile Manto kaB Wapi is an independent philosopher and community activist.