Southern Africa Centre (Cape Town)

The 22nd annual BEN-Africa (Business Ethics Network of Africa) conference was held in Gqeberha, South Africa from 1-3 November 2023. The conference was rich in perspectives from various African countries and included a video contribution from a youth perspective produced by 15-year-old Chrystal Munee from Kenya (see photo).

Globethics was not only a gold sponsor of the conference, but also contributed by having a paper presented at the conference by Globethics Southern Africa Centre Regional Manager Carike Noeth. 

The conference, which brings together people who share a passion for business ethics on the African continent, had as its theme this year 'Corruption and Ubuntu as an opportunity for change'.

Ubuntu is an African philosophy very closely related to communality, but it goes even further than being a mere community. Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that Ubuntu can be a very difficult concept to explain in a language that the Western world understands. Ubuntu encompasses more than communality. It is a way of living. It is a lifestyle that includes generosity, hospitality, care, and compassion (Richardson 2009:52).

When Desmond Tutu describes Ubuntu he says that: “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up in yours” (Richardson 2009:52) and that “a person is a person through other people” (Richardson 2009:52). For Mercy Oduyoye (2001:26) this means that what is considered to be personal, is in fact at the very same time communal. She explains that this has been carried down tradition through the belief that “I am, because we are” (Oduyoye 2001:26). Instead of saying “I think, therefore I am” (Richardson 2009:52), Tutu argues that Ubuntu in the African context rather believes that “I am human because I belong, participate, I share” (Richardson 2009:52), thereby resonating with what Oduyoye understands Ubuntu to be.

This Ubuntu not only includes care and compassion, but also a deep-seated sense of justice. If injustice is done unto an individual, it affects the whole community. Tutu writes: “[W]hat dehumanizes you, inexorably dehumanizes me” (Richardson 2009:52). As a moral philosophy in an African context, Ubuntu has become a strong driving force against injustice, oppression, carelessness, and dehumanisation. Neville Richardson (2009:52) further explains that those who are often the most vulnerable in society, whether it be the elderly or those affected by a mental or physical disability, are cared for within the community and its members.