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Michael Onyebuchi Eze

University of Witten-Herdecke
Course: History/Philosophy

On the historicity of ubuntu philosophy as an expression of African humanism within the socio-political and cultural development of South Africa

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Abstract

The post apartheid South African vision of history is three fold: it consists of (i) its origins as a nation (ii) its struggle during the apartheid, and, (iii) its emergence as a democratic state. Interwoven with this three fold vision is the quest for a national identity; an inclusive self-definition that addresses the injustice of the past by appealing to a shared historic culture, traditions or values from whence it draws its sense of self-definition.

My dissertation historicizes an African cultural tradition (ubuntu) as a postcolonial discourse within the socio-political and cultural context of South Africa. Historicizing ubuntu implies understanding the context in which it emerged and this context is the postcolonial and postcolonial is historical insofar as it is a discourse dependent on the deconstruction of historiography. The conceptual scheme of this ideology as a postcolonial discourse is both a mirror and an aftermath of the experience of the Apartheid hegemony. As an aftermath to this hegemony, ubuntu becomes a response to the Apartheid colonial consciousness. And, in historicizing ubuntu as a postcolonial discourse, ubuntu becomes an ideology that represents a national consciousness offering a medium for national identification; a clarion call for the rise of new nationalism where ‘nationalism’ became a substitute for social cohesion and integration through tradition.