Page 210 - A People Called Afrika

A PEOPLE CALLED AFRIKA

terioration rather than dramative narratives of reconciliation.
Our spiritual and social “Being” is benumbed and chilled to
a state of impotency. Our ethics have become fragments of
moral decay – where the generation we live in, has become
insensitive to the presence and flow of the life-saving ele-
ment of Ubuntu within the communal veins of our society.

We have thus given in to forces that are leading us to the point
of self-hate and self-destruction. This is being evidenced by
the social ills that have become a plague to our human soci-
ety. Human interest is the basis of all value and that human
fellowship is the most important of human needs. I strong-
ly believe in humanism because it has taught me, and many
others, to value human dignity. It has taught me that all hu-
man beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. You
possess human dignity if and only if you maintain it within
yourself and you want other people to recognize it. No one
gives you human dignity. People can only acknowledge and af-
firm it. You nurture and nourish it yourself; if you have self-re-
spect. Healthy self-worth shows that you have self-respect.

Dignity goes with worth. Decency towards others comes
from your sense of dignity. You treat other people de-
cently if you treat yourself in that way. We are not able
to give to others what we ourselves do not have.”

Ubuntu is a principle of living that enhances communal life, be-
cause it elevates ‘others’ above ‘self’, it eliminates the practice
of self-centeredness that is the fallout of Capitalism and forc-
es one to embrace the life-view that their choices and actions
have consequences that impact others and impact the whole.
It, of its very nature, imparts to the individual a sense of mind-

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