Even though much has been attempted and achieved to bring about reconciliation and unity and to inculcate a sense of nation-building and social cohesion amongst the diverse and fragmented communities of South Africa since the advent of democracy in 1994, we sadly continue to be confronted with serious issues of racism; poverty; inequality; homophobia and xenophobia; violence and killings; prejudice, greed, fraud and corruption and many other illnesses in our society. Our country (and the world for that matter) is crying out for uBuntu.

We hear this resounding cry for uBuntu in many of the everyday speeches. The cry for uBuntu that is taken up in many White Papers of Government and that is the cornerstone of our Constitution. uBuntu is called for out loud on a daily basis by the people of our Country as they are looking for the ONE big universal idea which will unleash our awesome ingenuity and inspire us to co-create a better tomorrow; a single-pivotal-idea with all the power to ‘move the world’ as Archimedes believed… a simple idea with enormous implications.

“uBuntu is a consciousness and a way of being in the world. In Africa, this consciousness that is inherently part of who we are as human beings has been passed down from generations to generations, mostly in an oral fashion and as a way of living, to where we find ourselves today: at the threshold of the era of uBuntu; an idea whose time has come".

~ Anna-Mari Pieterse