We are nurtured into becoming more human. Somehow, and very obstinately I am convinced that the notion of Ubuntu is a profound illustration of that which make us more human, of that which connects us. I am also convinced that it can be used as a guiding principle in narrative therapy. This I’ve explored in my lectures around empathy, compassion fatigue, burnout and human flourishing.

The notion of Ubuntu is expressed in ancient African proverbs, for example, the Nguni saying which translates to “a person is a person through other persons”, the Xitsonga expression “one finger cannot pick up a grain”. The quintessence of these sayings is that one’s humanity (humanness) is dependent upon one’s relationship with others. In Desmond Tutu’s Ubuntu theology the focus is on reconciliation, the restoration of the humanity and dignity of the victims of violence, but also that of the perpetrators of violence. “Our humanity was intertwined”.

At the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Desmond Tutu replied – “yes indeed, these people were guilty of monstrous, even diabolical, deeds on their own submission, but — and this was an important but — that did not turn them into monsters or demons. To have done so would mean that they could not be held morally responsible for their deeds. Monsters have no moral responsibility”. We always remain accountable for what we say and do.

The body repeatedly featured in narratives at the TRC. The corpse or remains of the victims of apartheid became the “privileged site of intersection”. The “visual core” of the TRC was the appeal of witnesses to bodily violations. Victims’ bodies were violated – “descriptions, representations and conflicts around bodies in various states of mutilation, dismemberment, and internment within the terror of the past”. Family members repeatedly pleaded for the remains or body parts of their loved ones, “making their visibility, recovery and repossession a metaphor for the settlement of the past of apartheid” (L. Bethlehem)

For the sociologist Didier Fassin history is not simply a sum of different narratives, but “it is also what is inscribed within our bodies and makes us think and act as we do”. The body is not just a manifestation of a person’s presence in the world, but it is also a site where the past has left its mark or as he puts it “the body is a presence unto oneself and unto the world, embedded in a history that is both individual and collective: the trajectory of a life and the experience of a group”. This is a description of Ubuntu.

During the TRC the exposure of the scar in public also became an act of purification and a purging of the social body. The surface of the body became a site of memory during the TRC hearings. The sight of the violated body allowed the body to be “stabilised as the site of memory” (Bethlehem). The pain of the body is shared. This is the idea of the body as narrative.

The spirit of Ubuntu belongs to all of us, but I would appeal for a deep sensitivity to the experiences of brutalised people in South Africa and what they experienced in their bodies for centuries when evoking “the spirit of Ubuntu” in law,  theology (Ubuntu based on human dignity, fellow-humanity, human interconnectedness and restorative justice) and in narrative therapy.