The word Ubuntu is an ancient African term, originating from the Nguni Bantu languages, that roughly translates to "humanity to others" or "I am because we are". It is rooted in the humanist philosophy that a person's identity is shaped by their community and their relationships with others. This concept is encapsulated in the Zulu proverb, "Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu," which means "a person is a person through other people".
Ubuntu is a radical Afrikan philosophy and cosmology that conceives personhood not as an individual attribute but as a condition realized through moral, spiritual, and communal relationships. It affirms that being human means living in reciprocity, dignity, and accountability within a shared order of justice, care, and restoration. Rooted in ancestral, ecological, and relational ethics, Ubuntu locates humanity within an interdependent web that includes land, ancestors, and the cosmos. It is not a liberal ideal of harmony or interdependence but a decolonial ontology of being that resists domination and reclaims Afrikan epistemologies of balance and liberation. Ubuntu insists that justice and community are inseparable, and that genuine personhood requires restoring right relations disrupted by colonialism, patriarchy, and racial capitalism. As such, it offers both a philosophy of ethical life and a revolutionary framework for rebuilding collective futures grounded in Afrikan cosmological and moral principles.