When Ubuntu meets Philanthropy

(translation): The humanity of soil-coloured people (brown people)

The concept of Ubuntu, also referred to as an African humanist philosophy, is most commonly idiomatically expressed as ‘umntu ngumntu ngabantu’. This loosely translates as ‘a person is a person because of/in relation to other people’, a statement usefully read alongside English poet John Donne’s line: ‘No [hu]man is an island, entire to himself.’

According to this view, what legitimises humanity is interrelationship and social collaboration between people. One’s humanity is not contingent, in other words, on the socio-economic strata one occupies, one’s sex, age, etc. In the Ubuntu paradigm, inter/co-dependence is a necessary element of humanity, and not merely a subjective human choice.

Lunga Mamphangashe, whose background is in Afro hip-hop, expressed it thus:
  This collective nature of our existence is expressed in how art is practised and taught, from one to another, as a form of empowerment.

Mamphangashe went further, asserting that, ‘when we do art, we are fixing our livelihood. We do this to deter the youth from criminal activities.’ Thus, art constitutes an important element of life, providing a medium for the exploration of one’s interior, emotional and imaginative worlds, and engagement in the speculative. It is this

which presents youth with a positive counterpoint to social ills; and it is in this context that we encourage each other to understand the importance of investing – time, energy, friendship, resources, etc – in other people and building bonds with them. ‘Akhukhomntu udalelwe ukuxhomekeka komnye umntu’ (no person is born to depend on another), Mamphangashe pronounced. The implication is that all people are born to be interdependent.

Phumelele Lavisa, a hip-hop artist and scholar, also stressed ways in which such service to society can be negotiated through our lives. ‘Now that I do cultural work,’ he said, ‘instead of asking the powers that be, I request my employer to allow me to continue the work of nation-building.’

Forms of help do exist, both private and public, that aim to empower those who find themselves facing adverse circumstances. However, some forms of assistance leave their beneficiaries worse off, more powerless, and destitute. The Eastern Cape, with all its economic development needs, incentivises its inhabitants to seek out better prospects elsewhere, resulting in an outflow of the capital so desperately needed to improve the status quo in the province.
Exercising power responsibly calls for the balancing of one’s own needs against those of other people. Xhosa literature, tracing back as far as 1823, shows us consistently that we are a people who have a tendency of making umhambi (a traveller/guest) feel at home, often at our personal expense. Therefore, we feel equally respected and seen when this effusive hospitality is reciprocated. Power Talks in the Eastern Cape enabled us to extend this humanity, whilst simultaneously receiving support, and this exchange enabled the staging of a beautiful, co-created cultural celebration.

Illustrator Pola Maneli asserts that ‘in order to seem legitimate, power, or systems of power, have to find dominant narratives.’ Maneli’s statement suggests that power must read society if its intent is to become entrenched with little opposition. Power must thus engage the widespread thoughts and opinions of the day, achieving hegemony over the majority, as Gramsci argued, to become broadly accepted and unopposed.

Over time, this ensures that the mere presence of an institution and the endorsement of its support connotes power. The ease with which one can access governmental, non-governmental, and foreign funding organisations has a strong bearing on the opportunities and possibilities creatives can pursue, impacting the quality of life they are able to enjoy. Local, continental, and international organisations constitute a very big part of how we view access and success. Our dreams as cultural producers and practitioners are frequently about doing or achieving something novel, meeting people across the world to expand our cultural exposure, and to experience and work in contexts vastly different to our own.

Photographer Vuyo Giba’s presentation on informal settlements, access to power, and electricity addressed the realities and challenges confronting people in under-served communities, not by choice but due to circumstances beyond their immediate control. Informal settlements and their communities illustrate the negative and positive potentials of power, particularly state/public power.

The Power Talks sessions in the Eastern Cape helped us to start unravelling the complexity of power within the cultural sector, and to surface the different forms that power assumes; the agents who wield this power – from individuals to communities, institutions, systems, government bureaucracies, etc; the dimensions, scope and dynamics of power; and to understand power’s differential impacts. We come away with an appreciation that it is especially important to prioritise poor, vulnerable and marginalised creatives, and to agitate to bring to the world the form of power that we have now learnt from the women of the Eastern Cape, which Lonwabo described in this way: One could argue that we in the Eastern Cape are presenting the world, as Bantu Biko professed, ‘a more human face’.²