By Dr Tafataona Mahoso

ELSEWHERE, I have observed that the African relational philosophy of hunhu teaches that there are three fundamental bases of hunhu/ubuntu, that is, bases for what makes a human being: 

Where Renē Descartes, as one of the founders of Euro-American linear philosophy, said: “I think, therefore I am,” the African philosopher says:

“I relate therefore I am.” 

My identity is the result of the relationships I was born into, the relationships I grew up in, the relationships I grew up to create and grow.  

Thought and language are also products of relationships. 

Thought is relational. Language is relational. 

No child anywhere in the world has ever been born into rights. Every child is born into relationships, good or bad, harmful and dangerous or optimal and nurturing.

The African Relational philosophy of hunhu teaches that there are three fundamental bases of hunhu/ubuntu, bases of what makes a human being:

• The first base (pfiwa) is the physical entity, the body, and it is the locus of survival.  Is the physical entity viable, strong, secured?

 This principle applies to individuals, families, communities, organisations and nations.We can mark this base ‘S’ for survival. 

• The second base (pfiwa) is space, land, place, the locus of autonomy and the source of sustenance. 

Here autonomy is seen as capacity to earn or own one’s own space and place, capacity to come and go in one’s own space and place.  

For the entire human race as an entity, the earth, so far, is our shared place and space, our shared source of sustenance and sustainability.

The productive earth is not raw material.  

It is a living organism with requirements for its own survival and sustenance as well.  

We can mark this base ‘A’ for autonomy.

• The third base (pfiwa) is the locus of relationships, insitution of solidarity. We can mark this base ‘I’, for insitution, with the whole basic triad coming out as S-A-I.

What these bases mean is that African Relational Philosophy defines munhu, the human being, as one essentially raised to be and, in turn, aims to be the nurturer of life in terms of the three mapfiwa of hunhu.  

How the nurturer of human life, dignity and autonomy was constituted in African society?

The nurturer of hunhu, the nurturer of human life, human dignity and human autonomy in African relational philosophy is not the equivalent of the human rights activist in Euro-centric human rights doctrine. 

 The two are constituted differently, if not in opposite directions.

The nurturer of human life and dignity in African philosophy is similar to a good artist.  He or she nurtures life, dignity and autonomy by enlarging and nurturing relationships.

He or she enlarges life by bringing together, that is via solidary constitution, as opposed to the Euro-centric activist who is driven by a propensity toward dis-selection of the other, to the extent of basing his measurement of self-worth on that ability to dis-select the African for plunder, torture and dehumanisation for the last 500 years.

The structures which apartheid man has built over the last 500 years reveal who he is in relation to humanity and human dignity.

These structures have been panel-beaten and renamed at convenient stages but they remain essentially the same apartheid structures of dis-selection, discrimination, racism and double-standards.

The structures of the human environment and the structures of the human relationships in which the child is born and raised are fundamental to our understanding of how he or she will turn out in relation to the need to nurture and defend human life, human dignity and autonomy beyond his or her own individual concerns.

According to Valeriya Mukhina in Growing Up Human:

“Growing up human means to learn to act and to comport ourselves in relation to people and objects in the way that is peculiar to human beings.  

When we say that the child, under the guidance of adults, masters social experience and human culture, we are alluding to his or her mastery of the skill of relating to other people via language, of correctly using articles and structures created by human hands, and of behaving in conformity with social convention.” 

That is the view in terms of social psychology. From a moral and ideological point of view, the structures of human environment, the structures of human values and the structures of human relationships work together to produce a pattern of subjection qualification or moral interpellation which pattern qualifies the young human being by telling him or her, by relating him to or by making him or her recognise four essential lessons:

• The difference between what exists and what does not exist;

• The difference between what is good and what is bad;

• The difference between what is possible and what is not possible;

• The language which enables one to read and to create human relationships, 

human situations.

It was most fascinating for me to read Stevie M. Nangendo’s study of the Bukusu society of Western Kenya titled Pottery and Symbolism in Bukusu Society.  

In that Bantu society, between Kenya and Uganda, the source of good clay for making pots is called biumbwa, singular; siumbwa, plural.  

The potter is called omubumbi, which in Shona is muumbi. The place where God (Wele Kabaka) created the first ancestor of the human race is also called biumbwa, meaning the place of the first creation of the human being. 

Now, in most Shona areas, muumbi we hari (the potter) is strictly a woman and there are many rituals connected with that role. Woman as muumbi tallies with Merlin Stone’s thesis that, in most societies at the beginning of civilisation, God was perceived as a woman.  Merlin Stone’s book is called When God was a Woman. 

Among the Bukusu, the making of pots from clay must follow strict rules.  One of them is that a cone-shaped cradle must be created first.  

Lumps of clay must be shaped into a series of rings or circles up and around the conical tower; and the potter’s hands must move from right to left or east to west in a counter clock-wise direction when starting and shaping the pot.

In their original formations, African dance movements in the dariro were also executed through counter-clockwise movements from right to left or, if one was facing north, by counter-clockwise movement from east to west.

Ubiquity of the dariro 

It is no accident, therefore, that the African community consistently organises its moral and ethical communication structures in ways which clearly correspond to the structures of the human-made environment.

• The court or dare takes place in a circle;

• The women’s dumba is a circle;

• The dance takes place in a circle;

• The story-teller teaches the children in a circle;

• Breakfast, supper or lunch is eaten in a circle;

• The all night pungwe was a circle of conscientisation used to mobilise communities during the liberation struggle.

Colonial and neo-colonial history has ignored or deleted the reading of these physical and moral structures, treating them as incidental or even accidental. 

It is no accident, therefore, that the African community consistently organises its moral and ethical communication structures in ways which clearly correspond to the structures of the human-made African environment.

In my visual illustrations, I show pictures or drawings from actual history which are in the form of circles or circle-like formations.

• The headquarters of the Zulu Kingdom in the 19^th Century, from Page 150 of Harold Schneider’s book, The Africans (1981);

• The circular organisation of living space as shown in the example of the Jie homestead on Page 103 of the same book of Harold Schneider; 

• The example of the African performance structure or formation used for dancing, theatre and story- telling and the pungwe, which can also be called the ‘circle of conscientisation’ and is still common everywhere in rural Africa; this performance structure is also called the dariro rekushaura nokutsinhira, the solo-and response circle.

• The dare or dumba which is the King’s or chief’s court or the women’s consultation assembly and retreat such as the mikiri of the Ibgo women of Nigeria;

• The so-called ‘traditional Kuanyama Ambo Village’ of Namibia on Page 13 of the book Living Conditions by Kathy Bond-Stewart and Chris Hodzi (1986);  and

• The Great Zimbabwe Monuments in Masvingo, which are the greatest national monuments for the nation of Zimbabwe. 

Because these are structures which Africans have conceived, designed and built on their own for centuries, one believe that reading them aesthetically and philosophically is most revealing. 

There is a story told by a missionary in colonial Zimbabwe which underlines the importance of the circle: An African man became ill and had to be taken to a clinic. Upon getting there he noticed that the room he was put in was square and not round. He expressed his anxiety and discomfort until the missionaries agreed to rake him to a rondovel. 

This suggests that there is a spiritual and aesthetic connection between the physical structures we build in everyday life and the moral, aesthetic and other values we develop therein. (East Africa and Rhodesia, 2 December 1948, p.390, (Colonial) African Education Criticised.

The timelessness of the dariro arises from the fact that it has no beginning and no end.

When viewed as a metaphor for relational thinking, it means that individual participants in the dariro of life may die or leave, but values and relationships which they represent and in which they participate do not go away or die. 

Mother may die but the value of motherhood is forever. Sister may go or die but the value of sisterhood endures.