By Dr Augustine Tirivangana

THIS week I have decided to share with you what I consider to be the ideological cornerstone of an education that deserves to be called African education.
Some call it the basis of nationalist consciousness, but it boils down to one thing: Celebrating and upholding one’s Zimbabwean-ness.
In one of my earlier articles, I discussed at length Ronald Dore’s concept of ‘qualification escalation’, which he satirises as ‘diploma disease’, the senseless paper chase that is not directed by any meaningful life objective.
It is a serious colonial legacy that has created a situation where there is no match between qualification and the quality of life.
For education to be meaningful, it must respond to the needs of a people. And to do so it must be directed by a people’s philosophy.
A people’s philosophy then directs the people’s worldview.
The worldview in turn then dictates the people’s actions including the content of what they learn.
That is why I have decided to share with you scholars unhu/ubuntu as the guiding philosophy of Africans.
The point is that being educated means being and living as a better African, and being a better African means in practical terms being an engineer, driver, pilot, teacher, whatever, who serves Africa and Africans because he or she has Africa and Africans at heart.
This is the essence of African sensibility, a missing link in today’s extrinsically driven learning.
Let us now examine unhu/ubuntu.
The word ubuntu comes from Zulu and Xhola languages.
Loosely translated it means ‘humanity towards others’.
Its thrust is on ‘the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity’.
In the Shona ubuntu is the same as unhu.
The concept of ubuntu in Zimbabwe is similar to that of other African cultures.
For instance in Kinyarwanda, the mother tongue in Rwanda, and in Kirundi, the mother tongue in Burundi, ubuntu refers to ‘human generosity’ or ‘humanity’ in general.
Similarly, in Runyakitara, the collection of dialects spoken by the Banyankore, Banyoro, Batooro and Bakiga of Western Uganda and also the Bahaya, Banyambo and others of Northern Tanzania, ubuntu refers to the human characteristics of generosity, consideration and humaneness towards others in the community.
In 1980, Stanlake Samkange (1922–1988), a Zimbabwean historiographer, educator and African nationalist, attempted to systematise an African epistemology in Hunhuism or Ubuntuism.
He emphasised three maxims which shape the theory (philosophy) of Hunhuism or Ubuntuism:
l To be human is to affirm one’s humanity by recognising the humanity of others and, on that basis, establish respectful human relations with them.
l If and when one is faced with a decisive choice between wealth and the preservation of the life of another human being, then one should opt for the preservation of life.
l The king owes his status, including all the powers associated with it, to the will of the people under him.
According to Samkange, sharing is only one of many virtues encompassed within unhu.
In the ethical domain of unhu, all visitors are provided for and protected in every home they pass through, without the expectation of payment, and do not need to carry provisions when they are on the road, as long as they dress in a respectable manner.
Every individual who is aware of the presence of a visitor within a locality should try his or her best to make that visitor comfortable.
Another aspect of ubuntu is that, at all times, the individual effectively represents the people from among whom he or she comes.
It is taboo to call elderly people by their given names; instead they are called by their surnames to banish individualism and replace it with a representative role.
The individual’s identity is replaced by a larger societal identity.
Every individual represents a family, village, district, province and region.
This requires the individual to behave according to the highest standards and to exhibit, to the greatest possible degree, the virtues upheld by his or her society.
Unhu embodies all those virtues that maintain harmony and the spirit of sharing among the members of a society.
A key concept associated with ubuntu, or unhu, is behaviour and interaction in the context of various social roles.
For example, a daughter-in-law traditionally kneels down when greeting her parents-in-law and serves them food, as a sign of respect.
She maintains the highest standards, because her behaviour is a reflection on her family and on all the women raised in that family.
The daughter-in-law does this as part of the ambassadorial function that she assumes at all times.
A woman’s deference to a husband or brother does not imply that the woman is subordinate, only that she possesses unhu and knows the proper attitude and behaviour for each social circumstance.
Under unhu, children are never orphans, since the roles of mother and father are, by definition, not vested in a single individual with respect to a single child.
Furthermore, a man or a woman with unhu will never allow any child around him or her to be an orphan.
The concept of unhu is also essential to traditional African jurisprudence and governance.
Under unhu, a crime committed by one individual against another extends far beyond the two individuals and has far-reaching implications for the people from among whom the perpetrator of the crime comes.
We shall discuss this in greater detail in the coming unit.
Unhu jurisprudence supports remedies and punishments that tend to bring people together.
A crime of murder might be remedied by creating a bond of marriage between the families of the victim and the accused, in addition to punishing the perpetrator both inside and outside his social circles.
The family and the society from which the criminal came are regarded as a sort of ‘tertiary perpetrator’, and are punished with a fine and social stigma that can only be absolved by many years of demonstrating unhu or ubuntu.
A leader who has unhu is selfless, consults widely and listens to his subjects.
He or she does not adopt a lifestyle that is different from his subjects, but lives among them and shares what he owns.
A leader who has unhu does not lead but allows the people to lead themselves.
Forcefully imposing his or her will on his people is incompatible with unhu.
A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed.
To forgive is not just to be altruistic.
It is the best form of self-interest.
What dehumanises you inexorably dehumanises me.
(Forgiveness) gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanise them.