Author’s note: This piece was originally published in the last quarter of 2003, based on my observations after spending a month in Zimbabwe. It has been slightly edited from its original form, and I have added a postscript pointing to some of the transformations of the past three years.

The principle of ubuntu is usually described as an African philosophy. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the greatest exponent of ubuntu, describes it as the principle of a person being a person through other persons (In Zulu, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu�). Ubuntu therefore defines the individual in terms of the collective. It was one of the essential principles behind South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, instrumental both because of its indigenous origin and because of its non-denominational, non-religious aspect. Ubuntu is sufficiently well recognized as a principle that it was cited in the post-amble to the South African Interim Constitution, establishing it as a philosophy of action as well as contemplation. It is one of many philosophies in Africa, though few are as famous and as radical when compared to the fundamental individualism of Western Society.

Philosophy is usually divided into schools or disciplines: Existentialism, Aesthetics, Logic. Ubuntu does not appear to belong to any of these, and therefore requires and deserves its own school. The word suffices to express the practice or study as well as the idea, so why not let the name stand for the school as well? No need to add an –ism or –ology to this noble word.

Zimbabwe has much in common with South Africa: the history of the two countries has been entwined by migratory labour patterns, settler-style colonialism and links forged between liberation movements. If the practice of ubuntu is not as strong in Zimbabwe and is lacking official government sanction, it is nonetheless present, seeping across the border and running through the shared history of the two nations of many peoples.

A disclaimer is in order: I am neither a philosopher nor, technically, an African. So, through the eyes of non-African, non-philosopher, here is a glimpse at the state and practice of ubuntu in Zimbabwe.

Contemporary Zimbabweans find themselves in an economic and political situation that is similar in many ways to Eastern Europe of the 1950s. Unemployment has soared to over 70%, inflation is now pegged at over 1,000% and rising, and much of the country is short of food.[1] As in communist Eastern Europe, bread is theoretically available, but bakers and vendors risk being arrested if they charge even slightly above the government-mandated price. The government attempts to maintain a semblance of control by creating youth training camps for the unemployed and insisting that all food distribution goes on under its own supervision. As in Eastern Europe, the government tries hard to convince its citizens to disbelieve the evidence of their eyes, insisting that all is well. Where this is not possible, hardship is blamed on pernicious foreign influence. Tony Blair and his government of “gay gangsters� was a favourite phrase a couple of years ago.[2]

In Eastern Europe, an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and state-endorsed paranoia accompanied economic and social decline. This was especially troublesome because in addition to trust, so many other things were in short supply: bread, jobs and perhaps most unnecessarily, attractive architecture.

There are many good reasons to be careful, even paranoid, in Zimbabwe. In the last few years, the government has arbitrarily abrogated every possible claim on it, from property and judicial rights to the right to life. In Zimbabwe, you are a person at the government’s sufferance: life and dignity are privileges that may be revoked at any minute at the discretion of unseen, unidentified authorities.

Yet despite fluctuating degrees of violence, there is little paranoia in evidence in Zimbabwe. People are cautious about what is said on their telephones and wary of speaking to people without any indication of their origin or background. Yet as I was conducting research for a thesis in Harare in 2003, people were overwhelmingly forthcoming. I had been told not to attach names to my interviews, but my interview subjects almost uniformly asked that their names be quoted. “The time has come for people to say these things and talk about them,� said one.

In place of the paranoia one might expect there appeared to be a growing sense of unity. There are many possible reasons why Zimbabweans were not as paranoid and mutually suspicious as one might expect. Though the government had created youth militias that roamed the streets and might beat you if you carry the wrong newspaper or wear the wrong T-shirt, it had not yet sponsored a pervasive, Eastern European-style informer network. Zimbabweans also retained an inexplicably high degree of faith in the democratic process, despite repeated government-engineered frustrations at the ballot box and the fact that a 23 years of purported democracy had failed to yield a change in regime.

Perhaps this refusal to succumb to the depredations of circumstance is ubuntu at work. Paranoia and ubuntu are philosophically and practically opposed. If one can only realize oneself through other people, one cannot live in fear of those people. The practice of ubuntu both demands that people refrain from turning on each other and helps resist this atomization by suspicion.

One of the biggest challenges to the successful practice of ubuntu in Zimbabwe is the sense of impending, even inevitable doom. For there are dooms to be faced everywhere: personal collapse as prices rise yet again and salaries do not, and political collapse, as the twisted political process is contorted yet again to legitimize the will of an elite few. The practice of ubuntu, humanity, is threatened by increasing inhumanity, in action and circumstance. Many white Zimbabweans have fallen victim to this mentality, leaving the country they love and love to complain about for ancestral homes where they may never feel at home, living in cold weather and among cooler people. Black Zimbabweans, with fewer options and often more ties, are by necessity more robust ubuntu practitioners.

There are always more threats on the way. Ubuntu is particularly vulnerable as a political philosophy. The challenge for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), and perhaps even more importantly for Zimbabwe’s coming-of-age civil society, is to sustain a practice and philosophy as illuminated by ubuntu as possible, in the face of capitalist philosophy, liberationist philosophy, International Monetary philosophy and a universe of other rivals, including the temptations to accede to the political elite and simply cut a deal with the government.

Nobody really knows exactly how much hope there is for Zimbabwean practitioners of ubuntu. Certainly, ubuntu alone will not lead Zimbabweans out of their current darkness. Without it, however, Zimbabweans are impoverished, reduced to facing their crisis in an increasingly Western mode yet without the historical and legal support that Western nations may now take for granted. There is a great deal of talk in the region about “African solutions� to Zimbabwe’s problems. Let us hope these solutions include a healthy dose of ubuntu.

Postscript : Three years later, the challenges to ubuntu in Zimbabwe continue to mount. The opposition has fractured and the two factions routinely accuse each other of violence and corruption, when they are not undermining more basic forms of humanity.[3] The leading bodies of civil society have begun to duplicate ruling party practices, with individuals trumping the collectivity.[4]

Meanwhile the ruling party maintains a steely grip on power, efficiently crushing or outmanoeuvring both internal and external challenges. If many Zimbabweans remain comparatively paranoia-free, they are also free of any illusions. The ruling party will not be leaving soon, and there is no longer an obvious alternative. Judging by the outcome of recent protests and demonstrations, Zimbabweans are withdrawing further into their private lives and the struggle simply to get by. Ubuntu is losing ground to hunger.

It was recently pointed out to me that there is no Zimbabwean equivalent for ubuntu’s foundational statement. The closest indigenous approximation is “Munhu munhu,� that is, “A human being is a human being.� This is a powerful formulation of individual human rights, but it is nonetheless a radical reduction of ubuntu, placing the individual rather than the community at its heart. ZANU (PF)’s greatest success has been to force Zimbabweans to choose between their own interests and those of the collectivity. As individuals – people, organizations and parties – Zimbabweans have all fallen to the ruthlessness of the regime. “Munhu munhu,� certainly, but human beings individually will not defeat the entrenched institutional brutality of the ruling party. It will require a people. It will require ubuntu.

[1] On inflation: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=15284; on unemployment: http://www.indexmundi.com/zimbabwe/unemployment_rate.html; on food shortage: http://www.zwnews.com/issuefull.cfm?ArticleID=15094.

[2] See, for example, the BulawayoChronicle, March 13 2002, cited at http://www.worldpress.org/Africa/497.cfm.

[3] See http://www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=55917&SelectRegion=Southern_Africa.

[4] See http://www.fingaz.co.zw/story.aspx?stid=1234.