A Zulu word built from the root for human being, sometimes translated as I am because we are.
Ubuntu is a word from the Nguni Bantu languages, including Zulu and Xhosa, built from the prefix ubu-, which evokes abstract being, and the stem -ntu, meaning person or human being.1 It is commonly translated as humanity, humanity toward others, or the phrase I am because we are.
The concept finds its fullest expression in the Zulu maxim umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu, meaning a person is a person through other persons.2 Equivalent expressions exist across dozens of Bantu language groups, from the Shona hunhu in Zimbabwe to obuntu in the Runyakitara dialects of Western Uganda.
In written sources published before 1950, ubuntu consistently appears as a human quality, a moral attribute describing someone's character.3 The broader philosophical meaning, ubuntu as an African worldview or ethic, emerged gradually during the second half of the twentieth century. Jordan Kush Ngubane's writings in African Drum magazine in the 1950s were among the first to frame ubuntu as a philosophy rather than a personal trait.1
The first book-length treatment of ubuntu as a political philosophy appeared in 1980 with Stanlake Samkange's Hunhuism or Ubuntuism: A Zimbabwe Indigenous Political Philosophy.1
Ubuntu gained global visibility during South Africa's transition from apartheid. Archbishop Desmond Tutu made the concept central to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's work, arguing that a person who has ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, and does not feel threatened that others are able and good.4
Philosopher Mogobe Ramose argued that Western philosophy's teaching in Africa was decontextualized because neither its inspiration nor its questions were based on the experience of being African in Africa.5
In Nguni languages, to say of someone wo, akumuntu lowo, meaning that is no person, does not deny their biological existence. It means they have failed to exhibit the moral character that ubuntu demands.2 Humanity, in this framework, is not given at birth. It is earned through how one treats others.