[Reposted from last year]

One of the main tenets of African philosophy is the concept of “Ubuntu.” Ubuntu is really the core of what it means to be a human being. It is about being selfless and thinking about others. It is about being a compassionate person and being “connected” to others. It is about understanding that if you hurt others, you really hurt yourself.

One of my touchstones is Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I have so much respect for all that he has done and for who he is. Tutu has defined the concept of Ubuntu as the understanding that “a person is a person through other people.” He adds that Ubuntu can best be understood as “me we.” I love that term — “me we.” He has written that the “solitary, isolated human being is a contradiction in terms.” All humanity is interconnected.

This is what is so destructive about prisons. They are about isolating and incapacitating human beings. They are about deliberately severing the “me we” or Ubuntu.

Tutu writes that “those who work to destroy and dehumanize are also victims — victims, usually, of a pervading ethos, be it a political ideology, an economic system, or a distorted religious conviction. Consequently, they are as much dehumanized as those on whom they trample.”

Ubuntu forces us to consider that as we dehumanize others we are actually dehumanizing ourselves in the process. What has happened to our humanity as we imprison masses of people? What has happened to our Ubuntu? Tutu recounts the story of South African minister of police Jimmy Krueger who on hearing of the torture and killing of activist and freedom fighter Steve Biko in prison is reported to have said that his death “leaves me cold.” Tutu writes of this: “You have to ask what has happened to the humanity – the ubuntu — of someone who could speak so callously about the suffering and death of a fellow human being.”

Malusi Mpumlwana was an associate of Biko who as he himself was being tortured by the police looked at his torturers and realized that these were human beings too and that they needed him “to help them recover the humanity they [were] losing.”

Tutu has written that “the only way we can ever be human is together. The only way we can be free is together.”

On the eve of another Thanksgiving, I am grateful that the universe has not diminished my own sense of Ubuntu. I wish the same for you. I will leave you with some final words by Archbishop Tutu and wish you all a very happy Thanksgiving. Prison Culture will be back on Monday.

When we look squarely at injustice and get involved, we actually feel less pain, not more, because we overcome the gnawing guilt and despair that festers under our numbness. We clean the wound — our own and others’ — and it can finally heal. — Desmond Tutu