Ubuntu-Inspired Training of Adult Literacy Teachers as a Route to Generating “Community” Enterprises

Abstract

This article describes experiences of an adult educator (Kofi Quan-Baffour) at the University of South Africa, 1995 to 2009, teaching tutorial classes to train teachers who, in turn, would offer adult literacy classes/sessions (in relation to adult basic education and training [ABET] policies initiated post-1994). The article aims to make a contribution to the literature on how literacy education can in practice activate a potential for the “humanization” of economic and social life. In the context of South Africa, we consider practices for nurturing a variant of humanism called Ubuntu. As co-authors, we use a narrative inquiry approach, drawing on exemplars that arose in dialogue, to report on our joint deliberations on the import of Kofi’s attempts to keep an Ubuntu spirit alive in the various learning settings with the trainees. Our reflective exercise took place via “debriefing sessions” in 2012, where we focused on the offshoots of literacy education for Ubuntu-informed cooperative work in community business enterprises. We point to some cooperative enterprises (a restaurant, a farming enterprise, and a sewing business), which we suggest incorporate an Ubuntu-style approach to human relationships based on people recognizing (and living) their mutual connectedness. We concentrate on what it may mean to be involved in basic adult education processes geared toward generating an improvement in people’s lives economically and socially. We argue that this co-constructed notion of Ubuntism in the context of adult education practices is relevant for other geographical contexts where practitioners hope to accomplish humanistic goals.

This article is written by Kofi, a Black male of Ghanian heritage raised in Ghana, and Norma, a White female South African. These descriptive terms are admittedly linked to apartheid-styled categories of racial/cultural identification; we draw on these categories not to limit our self-identifications but to indicate how we have managed to co-explore “stories from the field” about Kofi’s work with trainees preparing to be adult educators, despite the diverse perspectives we bring to this work. We suggest that in the spirit of Ubuntu, our “common humanity” has enabled us to mutually enrich our understandings via our co-reflections. In this regard, we follow Bangura (2005) who emphasizes that “with its particularity, individuality and historicality, Ubuntu inspires us to expose ourselves to others, to encounter differences of their [others’] humanness in order to inform and enrich our own” (p. 32). Considering Bangura’s position, Nafukho (2006) indicates that this orientation refers to the “willingness to learn from others as a way of building our own knowledge base and wisdom” (p. 410). In our current positions as professors at the University of South Africa, our dialogue with each other is situated in our desire to extend our knowledge base, share that knowledge with readers, and create an example for others.

Our conversations involved co-reflecting on the practice of Ubuntu in the training of adult literacy teachers, and revisiting and clarifying our understanding of its potential offshoots for developing community-oriented “business.” We undertook this reflective research to “make visible an aspect of culture” (Denshire & Lee, 2013, p. 222)—in this case cultural understandings related to Ubuntu. The purpose of this research was, as Denshire and Lee express it, to navigate the “landscape of remembered practice” (p. 221), while drawing out the implications of Kofi’s practices for nurturing Ubuntu in the adult education classes and community. We were particularly concerned with the question of how an Ubuntu-inspired adult education can work toward the goal of enabling adults to participate more fully in social and economic life. Hence, what stood out in Kofi’s memory as fulfilling the essence of Ubuntu-styled relationships both in the classroom and community became excavated and further developed via our reflective discussion.

The decision for us to co-reflect in this way can be likened to organizing what some researchers (Ellis & Bochner, 2006; Lincoln & Guba, 1985; Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2007) call a “debriefing session,” during which questions are raised about possible meanings and interpretations of encounters as experienced in the field. Through the debriefing, new insights are revealed. The co-reflection process can be considered a cooperative learning exercise, where we both extended our horizons of the potential that was carried in the memories that Kofi has of his involvement as an adult educator with the trainee teachers. ¹ As Norma asked questions, Kofi’s memories of “what occurred” was brought to the fore—as we together sought details not only in terms of what “was” (as remembered) but also in terms of the morality that the stories can be said to carry. ² Through this process, we both were developing conceptions of how we could see the stories recounted by Kofi as pointing to valuable “ways of being.” We acknowledge that this narration can be considered as a performative event (Riessman, 2003, p. 705) in the sense that it expresses the types of values that the adult educator (Kofi) and the debriefer (Norma) wish to express and be associated with.

In considering our storytelling as a performative event, we indicate that stories must “not be purely rational recitations: they must also contain an affective component,” that in turn can touch others (Kaufmann, 2010, p. 461). This way of developing research explorations via dialoguing around the felt significance of stories is one that has been gaining ground in processes of social scientific inquiry (Collins, 1990, 2000; Kenny, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 2003; McIntyre-Mills & De Vries, 2011; Merrill, 2007; Romm, 2010). As Kenny (2002) elucidates, stories told as part of research explorations offer openings for describing and inviting co-reflection with others on values and critical themes.

We acknowledge that the construction of our account does not fit easily into the genre of traditional social scientific research. Here, we follow Pinnegar and Daynes’s (2007) reminder that “research increasingly involves blurred genres” (p. 17). This argument has also been expressed by Behar (1996) who makes the point that when people write up autobiographical accounts of their involvements in social situations, no one objects to this “as a genre in its own right” (p. 12). What bothers critics, she suggests, is “the insertion of personal stories into what we have been taught to think of as the analysis of impersonal social facts” (Behar, 1996, p. 13, as cited in Romm, 2010, p. 299). Behar pleads for a position where “stories” constructed as part of a research endeavor can be judged in terms of their being able to move readers so as to embrace a concern with “serious social issues” (p. 14). We believe that Kofi’s experiences can highlight the seriousness of finding ways to revitalize values such as Ubuntu in adult literacy education.

Clandinin and Rosiek (2007) indicate that the function of storytelling as “filling our world with meaning and enlisting one another’s assistance in building lives and communities” is part of our human existence (p. 35). What feels relatively “new” is the use of narrative methodologies (such as we present here) to (re)explore our social worlds (Clandinin & Rosiek, 2007, p. 35). What we could consider “re-searching” via dialogically drawing out meanings of stories from different settings in which Kofi was involved, is aligned to Flyvbjerg’s (2006) account of the value of case study research as offering what he calls the “production of exemplars” (p. 219). These exemplars enable us to highlight examples of (context-dependent) human dynamics; and they point to “available” possibilities in the social world (that is, as being practiced in some social settings, even if they are regarded as outliers in certain instances).

Our way of proceeding with our “case” can be seen as tantamount to Schmidt and Whitmore’s (2010) approach when they selected a specific teacher for in-depth analysis of her talk because it was “recognized that her thinking and acting as a literacy arts teacher held promise for answering [their] research question [in connection with improvisation and agency]” (p. 392); the teacher thus became “the subject of a case study” (p. 392). In our case, our “research question” (or topic of exploration) was how one might activate possibilities for making a difference in communities via the training of adult literacy teachers, and our debriefing dialogue in this regard can likewise, as with Schmidt and Whitmore’s analysis of teacher talk, be considered as “information rich.”

It should be noted that we are not claiming that our perspectives in this article are striving to offer a univocal truth about “how it was” in the contexts under consideration. Rather, we offer a narration that we invite others to write into. As the narration is written into by others, its possibilities for what it holds on the level of action potential can be further “interrogated” (Kaufmann, 2010, p. 458).

Collins (2000) expresses this orientation to knowing when she indicates that she does not wish to “duplicate the positivist [realist] belief in one ‘true’ interpretation of reality” (p. 297). Rather, she wishes to acknowledge that the statements made by her in relation to “the world” relate to a world that becomes presented by virtue of the values, concerns, and feelings that are brought to bear in its appearance. Yuval-Davis explains that in terms of Collins’s (1990) argument (p. 236), operating from a “dialogical standpoint epistemology” means that one recognizes that “from each positioning the world is seen differently, and thus any knowledge based on just one positioning is ‘unfinished’” (Collins, as cited in Yuval-Davis, 2004, p. 16).

In essence, our methodological “design” involved our setting up three focused conversations to foreground Kofi’s personal stories, and to further reflect on their import for the activation of relationally oriented social and business practices, while leaving openings for readers to engage with the narrative that we have developed here. Our dialogues took the form of informal conversations, in which we unpacked meanings that can be ascribed to Ubuntu by mutually interrogating particular experiences that Kofi reported. Our intentions in this regard are in keeping with Chilisa’s (2009) suggestion regarding “decolonizing research methodologies” (p. 413). She avers that one of the principles of such methodologies is that “people must enter the world of scientific and scholarly analysis from the path of their historically and culturally developed perspectives” (p. 413). We have “entered the world of analysis” via our consideration of the import of the stories told below. We are not trying to present our understandings as if they are a “finished” account of Kofi’s experiences as an adult educator. Instead, we are posing them as opportunities for re-thinking the value of Ubuntu and how it can be practiced and nurtured in adult literacy education in South Africa and other contexts. We suggest that while readers engage with our storying—or what Archibald (2008) calls “storywork” (p. 371)—they will consider how our discussion has significance for envisaging possibilities for more relational styles of social being in various geographical settings. In our conclusion, we offer some deliberations on possible links between Ubuntu-oriented cultural perspectives and “other” heritages.

This article outlines our understanding of what an Ubuntu-instilled learning ideally cultivates. In addition, it provides evidence of Ubuntu-styled actions that have emanated as an offshoot of the classes facilitated by Kofi. But before proceeding with this, we explain some of the social and political context of the move toward ABET as one of the paths toward rectifying legacies of apartheid in South Africa.

The Drive Toward ABET in South Africa

As McKay and Romm (2010) point out, prior to 1994, adult educators in South Africa received little or no formal training: “With democracy came the recognition that the delivery of quality adult education depended on well-trained adult practitioners who played a pivotal role in re-dressing the legacies of apartheid” (p. 418). Among these legacies were

. . . the high attrition rates in schools and the high numbers of adults who never attended school, [which meant that] millions of adult South Africans were functionally illiterate. It was clearly important to accelerate the development of an ABET system. (McKay & Romm, 2010, p. 418)

The Department of Education in South Africa’s (1995) White Paper on Education and Training recognized that guidelines needed to be created for the provision of ABET across the country, which, as McKay and Romm (2010) explain, were linked to

the development of human resources within the broader strategy for national development, and that ABET was aimed at restructuring the economy, addressing past inequalities and contributing to the creation of a democratic society. ABET had to provide people with the basic foundation for lifelong learning and equip them with the skills and critical capacity to participate fully in society. (p. 418)

Maruatona and Millican (2010) further indicate that ABET policy making “acknowledged the diversity of learners and individual and community circumstances. The focus was on determining learners’ needs and resources to help them improve their lives through literacy” (p. 113). They point out, as does Aitchison (2003), that it was understood in the Department of Education, South Africa (1998) National Multi-Year Implementation Plan For Adult Education And Training that policy development in this field would need to be an ongoing process so as to be able to incorporate challenges experienced by the various stakeholders involved, namely, the state, non-governmental organizations, and the economic sectors. This article does not adjudicate on the overall “success” of ABET policies but concentrates on some examples of Kofi’s experiences using the process of adult education for transformative development in the sense of improving the quality of life for individuals and communities.

As a background to examples “from the field” to generate increased participation in socio-economic processes for trainee teachers as well as for their learners, we now present some theoretical considerations around the meaning of Ubuntu and attendant value-orientations associated with Ubuntu.

Some Theoretical Understandings of Ubuntu

It is important to explain that as we discuss theoretical understandings of Ubuntu, we regard “theorizing” as a process linked to evoking new options for seeing—rather than as presenting authoritative propositions about what is being explored. We are not presenting an authoritative account of the meaning of Ubuntu or its implications for practice. We draw on writers such as Barry and Elmes (1997), Hemphill (2001), Romm (1997, 2001, 2007), and Trahar (2009). Our position also concurs with Dillow (2009), who indicates that in her journey toward theoretical understanding—in her case examining the lived experience of teaching assistants in primary schools in the United Kingdom—she had to struggle between the need to be scholarly and the desire to be evocative (p. 1338). She chose ultimately to create an evocative account that could elicit new understandings and feelings on the part of readers. Likewise, in our discussion of Ubuntu and its relevance for adult educators involved in literacy education, we are hoping to be evocative—and hoping to move toward carrying some message (still interpretable by readers) about human agency and human relational possibilities. As we proceed, we offer an interpretation, rooted in our examples, of what might be considered as distinctive about Ubuntu in relation to “other” ways of seeing humans as social beings. But first we outline some theoretical visions of Ubuntu as an African orientation to the world.

Mnyaka and Motlhabi (2005) begin their discussion of Ubuntu by suggesting that although there is a diversity of African cultures, “there are commonalities to be found among them in areas such as value systems, beliefs, practices, and others,” which constitute an African world view (p. 215). They aver that “Ubuntu/botho (humanism or humanness)” is both a philosophy and a way of life “that has for many centuries sustained the African communities in South Africa in particular, and in Africa as a whole” (Mnyaka & Motlhabi, 2005, p. 215). They cite Sogolo as explaining that Ubuntu can be seen as denoting “a convergent set of desired goals which all, or at least most, Africans entertain and towards which their activities are directed” (Sogolo, 1993, p. 119, as cited in Mnyaka & Motlhabi, 2005, p. 216). However, Mnyaka and Motlhabi note that Ubuntu is not easily defined. They refer to Sebidi who contends:

Defining an idea like “Ubuntu” is akin to trying to give a definition of “time.” Everybody seems to know what “time” is until they are asked to define it or detail its essential characteristics without which “time” could not be “time.” This is based on the notion that Ubuntu is something abstract, [a] non-perceptible quality or attribute of human acts the presence or absence of which can only be intuited by the human mind. (Sebidi, 1988, as cited in Mnyaka & Motlhabi, 2005, pp. 216-217)

Various authors have tried to express in English what Ubuntu might mean in practice. Some English translations are “humanity towards others”; “I am, because we are”; “a person becomes human through other persons.” It also can mean “a person is a person because of other persons.” Wikipedia summarizes it this way: Ubuntuism is a “belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity” (Ubuntu-philosophy: Wikipedia, n.d.). This implies that human life is defined in terms of our relationship with others, and our positive interdependence—so that where and who “we” are is inextricably connected to “others.” The Akans say nifa dware benkum na benkum nso adware nifa (literally translated: The right hand washes the left hand and the left hand also washes the right). In other words, no one is self-sufficient in this world.

Ubuntu also implies a respect for the particularities of the beliefs and practices of others. One translation of Ubuntu, mentioned by Louw (2006) as lesser known than others, is, “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” (a human being is a human being through the otherness of other human beings). That is, if we are to be human, then we “need to recognize the genuine otherness of our fellow citizens”/world citizens (Louw, 2006, p. 6). What is emphasized within the Ubuntu worldview is that a human being is always a being in relation to other humans. An Ubuntu orientation means that people are aware on an intuitive level that whatever happens to the individual happens to the community/society, and whatever happens to the community/society happens to the individual (Sebidi, 1988, pp. 9-10).

We need to acknowledge, however, that Ubuntu has been somewhat eroded via colonialism, urbanization, and Western education—which bring with them more individualistically oriented worldviews. Hence, a cardinal feature of Ubuntu—communalism—may not be as much practiced in African cities as it might be in the rural communities, which have been less infiltrated by Western-styled individualism. ³

Ubuntu Discourses as Narratives of Return

Gade (2011) notes that when invoking the idea of Ubuntu, it is often associated with what he calls a “narrative of return”—that is, with a plea to return to past values. As he puts it, “Some of the narratives that have developed in relation to Ubuntu are also narratives of return” (p. 304). He adds that discourses and narratives about Ubuntu are often set in contexts where narrators are attempting to revive the search toward African dignity and to identify past values that they believe should inspire politics and life in general in the future society.

The storylines in narratives of return emphasize that colonialism functioned, inter alia, to overshadow much of Africa’s indigenous knowledge system and practices, so that colonialism is recognized to be not only a political imposition but also a cultural one (Wiredu, 2005, p. 1). With the emergence of political independence and the establishment of institutions like the African Union and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), many African leaders and ordinary citizens have realized the need to revive African indigenous knowledge systems. This is linked with the African Renaissance, which urges us to consider the continent’s rebirth, revival, regeneration, and re-awakening by looking back to indigenous knowledge and values. Recent notions of the African Renaissance in South Africa have been spearheaded by President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa (cf. Mbeki, 1998). In 1998, Liebenberg (1998) commented that “during the past year,” in particular, “the term ‘African Renaissance’ has become part of the newspeak of the new South Africa.” The concept of re-awakening of Africa carries the message that indigenous value systems that identify people as Africans and can move the continent forward in the new millennium must be revisited and revived. (See in addition Quan-Baffour, 2006, 2008.) Ubuntu in the context of African Renaissance discourse is considered as an important philosophy which when put into practice can speed the rebirth of Africa.

We are not attempting to make claims about the extent to which Ubuntu is a “past” practice that may have become eroded. Instead, we are attempting to draw out what we consider to be of value in Ubuntuism, insofar as it expresses the cultivation of positive interdependence between humans. In this respect, we suggest that discourses invoking the term Ubuntu are calling for a re-activation as well as extension of the meaning of Ubuntu.

Implications for Adult Learning

One feature of Ubuntu is its implications for adult learning. Shiundu and Omulando (1992) indicate that in terms of the tenets of Ubuntuism, learning, especially for adults, was for the purpose of enabling individuals to play family, community, and societal roles (pp. 15-16). This is in contrast to the colonial administration, which was geared to provide adults with learning practical skills aimed at making them better laborers (Shiundu & Omulando, 1992, as referred to by Nafukho, 2006, p. 411). Nafukho (2006) recounts that a core tenet of Ubuntu is that “learning and work in the traditional African societies were accomplished through peer alliances” (p. 412). He indicates that when peer groups are formed they become economically self-reliant, “making additional profit to benefit group members is important, but the focus is never to exploit members” (p. 413). Nafukho concludes his account of Ubuntuism by suggesting that

we need research to test paradigms like ubunogogy that have not been adequately researched in support of the development of the fields of adult education and human resource development. (p. 414)

This article contributes to such scholarship, not to establish the conditions that predictively lead to the practice of Ubuntu but rather with the intention of showing some examples of Ubuntu-inspired education as exemplars.

Some Exemplars of Ubuntu-Inspired Being Together

In this section, we turn to exemplars of adult learning practices, explicating what Ubuntu meant to Kofi and his students as they were learning to be adult educators. Course resource materials included University of South Africa (UNISA) guide material setting out, inter alia, the meaning of “co-operative learning.” This guide material formed the basis of the classes. ⁴ The relevant section of the guide (McKay, 1995) asks students to consider the question of what makes for “successful co-operative learning” by directing them to think about the concept of positive interdependence and positive interaction. These terms are defined as follows:

• Positive Interdependence

Positive interdependence means that the group members rely on each other. They ask for and they give help. They realize that the success of the group depends on the success of each member. In other words, each member’s contribution in the group does not only benefit the individual but helps the group as a whole. This means that in the group they share resources and they help other team members to learn. This links to the idea of Ubuntuism.

• Positive Interaction

We need to create a climate where our learners can promote each other’s success by helping, assisting, supporting, encouraging and praising each other’s efforts to learn . . . . [Furthermore], there are a range of other skills they need when they work together. Some of these are leadership, decision making, trust building and conflict management. (McKay, 1995, p. 104)

The guide material thus draws attention to the need for the trainee teachers to gear their future classes toward people learning together and flourishing from each other’s successes while offering and getting help from others, as a route to trust building. Kofi perceived the guide as connecting his students’ socio-historical knowledge and experience of Ubuntu with their learning to be a teacher. One of the functions of the tutorial classes as Kofi saw it, was to keep alive this spirit of Ubuntu. In our reflective conversations, he explained that trainee teachers were being prepared to teach people who could not read and write “literacy plus some business skills in such a way that they could develop themselves while rendering services to the community.” During the debriefing, we tried to unpack this further. Norma asked,

So are you suggesting that developing oneself in the spirit of Ubuntu goes hand in hand with rendering services? And do you think that the trainee teachers were aware of the link between self-development and social service?

Kofi replied,

From my own experience although Ubuntu is understood in principle, many people do not practice it. There are a few, but I saw myself as trying to inspire people who were studying for the diploma.

He continued,

The idea of Ubuntu is that it teaches people that you are a servant of the people. My mother taught me this way of relating to people by asking me every day after school “what good have you done to anybody today?” And I had to report, if for instance, I fetched water for the teacher. In this way I developed a spirit of feeling in relation to others and I wanted to combine this into my adult education classes.

Below are examples of his recollection of this intention and of our drawing out its implications.

Students on the Diploma Course Cooperating Among Themselves and Creating a Restaurant in a (Rural) Community

One of the experiences was Kofi’s creating a way of working with diploma student trainees, where students could act as supports for each other’s learning via group work. Kofi’s intention was to “teach” cooperative learning by creating tasks that he set for them that required them all to draw on each other for help. For example, they might be discussing some social issue as required by the “contextual studies” course that was part of the training (such as ways of addressing HIV and AIDS). Kofi used cooperative learning as a teaching strategy so that learners were able to work together and draw on their own and others’ “reservoir of experience.” Together they explored aspects of the problem and identified options for action on the part of themselves and others. He hoped that this experiential knowledge of cooperative support processes would be transferred over to their classes with adult learners when they became facilitators in their own learning centers.

As they were working together on the tasks set, he was pleased to observe that while they had been learning together and sharing experiences, they were also recognizing that they could cooperate in different ways outside of the class setting, including in “business” enterprises. The relationships of positive interaction that they were learning and doing in the class were stimulating them to consider ways of continuing these relationships in work-related situations. This was also supported by Kofi as part of the diploma course. He supported his students in seeking avenues for setting up small, income-generating enterprises promoting local economic development. He encouraged them to seek out opportunities for developing the cooperative relationships they were developing in class to generate joint enterprise. As a result, in one of the classes several of the students decided to open a restaurant to serve the community.

During the debriefing dialogue, Kofi expressed to Norma that he had had a desire to reconnect with the trainee teachers. He wanted to see how they were faring and how their work in the training program had affected them. He was taken to the restaurant and told by the students/entrepreneurs who had by now graduated that they had successfully located a need in the community, as the food here was affordable and workers in the community could buy and eat at a cheap price.

Continuing our “debriefing process,” Norma sought more detail on how their efforts could be said to reflect a spirit of Ubuntu. Norma asked,

Was it “business” sense that led them to sell the food at a cheap price so that there would be sufficient customers, or was it that they were indeed trying to serve the community in terms of an understanding of Ubuntu as implying that one must act in service to others?

In answer to this question Kofi replied,

It was both (and not either/or): In the spirit of Ubuntu, the idea is not to charge the highest possible price that workers in the community could and would pay, but to charge a reasonable price. This means that those running the restaurant enterprise gain respect in the community for performing a service. The individual feels part of the community and therefore does not wish to break “community” bonds—by trying to gain unduly at the expense of others’ welfare.

During our reflection, we concluded that this practice is not necessarily common in the community. However, based on the expressions these students used when indicating how the restaurant provides a service in terms of an identification of needs within the community, they understand this restaurant to be operating in the spirit of Ubuntu.

Unless one understands this mode of reasoning/feeling, it may be difficult for “outsiders” to appreciate how these business operators were seeing themselves as playing family, community, and societal roles (Shiundu & Omulando, 1992) via their business—rather than as simply operating to “make a profit.” However, with some understanding/intuition of Ubuntu, we can appreciate that the motive of these “business” people could be seen, at least in part, as social service not only to their immediate family but also to the community being served and indeed to the wider society—in the sense that they were participating in “local economic development” as needed in the country via their enterprise. We thus can regard this as one way of conceptualizing the development of “community” enterprises, where participants take into account and practice the Ubuntu feeling of relatedness to others—including family, community, and wider society.

Students of the Diploma Course Cooperating Among Themselves and With Their Own Students/Learners to Start a Cooperative Farming Business

Another exemplar that we co-reflected on was a case where some of the diploma students in the course had a few years later begun to facilitate adult learning classes with some adult learners in the community. When Kofi returned again to find out how they were doing, he discovered that three of the students together with some of their students had set up a farming business. The students organized this by asking the local community leader to make some land available for farming. He gave them half a hectare of land. Some of the teachers and their learners established a vegetable garden. The teachers and students kept some of the harvest for themselves and sold the rest at fair, not exorbitant, prices. The idea was that the farming venture should also be a service to the community. It was understood that the people in the community are poor. Kofi explained to Norma how they were responsive to this. As he clarified, “Even if someone wanted to buy only, say, one or two tomatoes rather than a whole packet, they would allow this.”

In seeking further deliberation around why this case can be taken as an example of “community”-oriented enterprise, Norma asked,

Were they employing any people to help with the farming and, if so, how much money were they paying these people—was it a decent wage?

Kofi answered,

They were employing a few people to assist, and it depended on how much profit they made as to how much they could pay the workers. The arrangement was that if you assist, we will share the profit. There was not a fixed wage as it depended on levels of profit.

In other words, the Ubuntu notion of interdependence is evident here, where “employers” and “workers/assistants” understand their mutual connectedness.

To increase profit levels, some of the workers became marketers and helped promote within the community the fact that there were eggs available too that were being sold from the farm (as they had chickens too). They began marketing by word of mouth that villagers must “go to these people to buy eggs,” and thus the business grew. In addition, a shop at the school (by the school gate), selling food to the schoolchildren that was not part of the cooperative venture as such, also started buying from that farm, and the educators (UNISA graduates) developed an added relationship with the shop owner. She was told that she was eligible to join classes to become literate. She needed to become literate, especially financially, so as to be able to determine the sale prices of food at the shop and not lose money. And so the “family” of cooperative interdependent relationships grew larger as she and others whom she recruited became students of the learning centers and UNISA graduates. This sense of widening mutual interdependence created and sustained the “individuals-in-connection,” all acting in terms of their sense of mutual interdependence, that is, employers, workers/assistants, and additional “partners” who needed literacy and numeracy training and thus could connect with the members of the cooperative.

Our next part of the dialogue asked Kofi to explore further whether his own attempt to infuse an Ubuntu spirit in the lessons had made a difference to the outcomes that he was describing. He responded that his own Ubuntu-styled upbringing by his mother affected his approach. At home (in Ghana), he was taught that people must help each other at all opportunities and that “if you do good you will be cared for.” This meant that consciously or not, he was “making sure that people in the class cooperated with others.” The outcome of this way of organizing the class relationships was that the class members came to see themselves as “brothers and sisters who like each other and therefore should also be working together.” So they considered “what can we do” outside of the class setting. That is, through seeing themselves as linked through family-like ties, and through trusting each other, they were able to find an enterprise in which they could become jointly involved. And this became the springboard for the outcomes as outlined here.

During our debriefing sessions, Kofi remembered the initiative he had taken with a different class, where he noticed that one of the ladies in the class was an expert in sewing. He asked her where she lived in the village and whether she had a place where she could train some people on how to sew. She agreed she could, and they managed to find some interested potential students from the community. These people themselves bought some sewing machines and so the classes began. After the “sewing teacher” had trained them for some time, the burgeoning seamstresses realized that they would benefit from literacy classes. They recognized that they needed to be able to read, write, and especially be numerate, for example, to use a tape measure. And so she found people for her adult learning center (when she graduated from UNISA). Furthermore, she and some of the learners (about 10 women) formed a sewing cooperative with her as leader where they made knitted items, table cloths, and so on. In this way, she “made a mark” in the community. Thus, her helping/caring actions (initially to help others to learn how to sew) at some point had the consequence that she too became “successful,” as expected within Ubuntu philosophy. This is another story of people sharing and so developing and increasing ties, which in turn lead to new ties, as people increase their sense of “positive interdependence, where everybody’s success/well-being is recognized to be related to that of others.”

What is distinctive about this in relation to other humanistic philosophies where socially conscious people brought up in non-African contexts too might have feelings of being connected with “humanity?” One answer to this is that according to Ubuntu philosophy “the individual is not just a social being but a being inseparable from the community” (Quan-Baffour, 2007). What is distinctive about Ubuntu is that in the first place one does not feel separable from “others” when practicing Ubuntu and acting as a servant to people. Furthermore, it is understood that if one acts in terms of the spirit of Ubuntu, one will indeed be cared for. This is a specific way of feeling and believing: One is not self-sufficient and one’s “success” is bound up with the well-being of others.

Nonetheless, as Sebidi (1988) comments, Ubuntu is a quality of human acts the presence or absence of which “can only be intuited” and is not easily explicable in words. It amounts to action in terms of a bond that is felt but not easily describable. We have tried via the use and interpretation of exemplars to suggest possible ways of viewing Ubuntu-styled social relationships insofar as “community” enterprises are concerned. We have proposed that processes of adult education can be helpful in encouraging/revitalizing this. We consider that our joint reflection on exemplars as a mode of inquiry can contribute to the development of insights/wisdom in the area of adult basic education generally and Ubuntu-inspired pedagogy specifically.

Conclusion

In this article, we reported on our joint reflections on the nurturing/keeping alive of a spirit of Ubuntu via basic adult education processes geared toward enabling an improvement in the quality of social life as part of “literacy” initiatives. Via our reflections, we brought to more explicit awareness our understanding of the potential to incorporate Ubuntu in adult learning settings as a way of instantiating specific humanistic aims of adult education. As Jordi (2011) explains, reflection can be considered as providing a space for people to “listen to themselves, or[/and] be listened to,” so as to enable the “emergence of conscious meaning” (p. 185). In this case, we generated a discussion around, and enabled meaning to emerge in relation to, ways in which an Ubuntu-inspired adult education process can activate possibilities for strengthening socio-economic practices in the community that express, and develop, this philosophy.

Although the discussion is set in South Africa, it evidently has relevance for other parts of Africa (with Kofi expressing his Ubuntu-styled upbringing in Ghana, which he brought to the fore as adult educator in South Africa). But we believe that our article can have relevance for other geographical contexts too, where people across the world may be searching for ways of “humanizing” our social existence. The Ubuntu-oriented African humanism is an option that might resonate with people who come from “different” heritages and who are also exploring variations of what it means to recognize our essential connectivity as humans. As Praeg (2008) notes,

To insist that Ubuntu is completely foreign, novel and un-understandable and hence, untranslatable, is to exaggerate the difference. To translate it simply as just an African version of a number of familiar philosophies (e.g., communitarianism, socialism, humanism) is to collapse the difference. (p. 370)

Our analyses have focused on our enactment of a conversation between a Ghanaian and a (White) South African with us both trying to clarify what is distinctive about Ubuntu, while talking this through in relation to exemplars in the field of adult education. Our feeling that we managed to communicate across our heritages, and were able to connect with each other via the conversation, is an indication to us that different heritages are not completely incommensurable, albeit that they are not easily translatable into the language of the other (as admitted by Praeg, 2008). Moreover, we have also suggested that it is via conversation (our own and that of others) that the meaning of Ubuntu in relation to “other” humanistic philosophies becomes not only elucidated but also (co)constructed. It should be borne in mind that African humanism is itself in a process of re-invention as Africans continually “read, challenge, [and] rewrite their discourses as a way of explicating and defining their culture, history and being” (Mudimbe, 1988, p. xi). Likewise, as African humanism becomes re-invented and ways of practicing Ubuntu become further explored, so adult educators across the globe might find what is of value to them in this and use this “knowledge base” to re-inflect their own practices (and their reflections and co-reflections on these practices ⁵ ).

Brookfield (1996) indicates in this regard that whether we “like it or not, we are all theorists as well as practitioners.” Our practice as educators “is informed by our implicit and informal theories about the processes and relationships of teaching [including the purposes of adult education]” (Brookfield, 1996, p. 36). He suggests that when we are exposed to a theoretical explanation of some experience “that interprets . . . experience in a new and revealing way,” we can develop new comprehension. Brookfield’s suggestion is tied to his view that experiences themselves are constructed by us (as we make sense of them) as much as they “happen” to us. This is because “the meaning schemes and perspectives that we employ to assign significance to events shape fundamentally how we experience them” (Brookfield, 1996, p. 36). In this article, we have tried to offer an interpretation, via our joint reflections, of Kofi’s experiences as an adult educator in relation to his involvement with trainee teachers, and at the same time to offer insights that are revelatory to ourselves as well as others (who may be reflecting anew on their experiences). We have focused on offering an enriched account of Kofi’s experiences (as we co-reflected on these), which can contribute to reflections of other adult educators considering their engagement in encouraging humanistic goals through literacy education.

Considering our discussion in relation to similar theories of adult learning, our reflections can clearly be seen as expressing a view of adult literacy education as serving the purpose of enabling people to—as Arnett (2002), interpreting Paulo Freire’s humanistic position, states it—“participate in institutional life” as participants, rather than being controlled in terms of “systems of oppression” (p. 491). Arnett (2002) recognizes that Freire’s position—developed mainly in relation to Latin America—offers a pedagogical approach to facilitating social participation, which, however, needs to be “embedded in historically situated implementation and agency,” so as to be attuned to “the uniqueness of differing historical situations” (p. 496). Arnett, drawing on Freire, defines the educator’s task as “doing one’s best” to facilitate a sense of agency, so that educators and students (in a dialogical relationship) can participate in the creation of history within a “historical moment” (p. 503). Readers can consider this article in terms of the display of possibilities for adult educators to do their best (while being mindful of the contexts in which they are operating) to enable people to re-envision and reshape ways of living and thus participate in “society’s historical process”—as Freire (1994) puts it (p. 256).

Freire (1994) sees the goal of literacy initiatives as being to create a “road to humanization.” Literacy processes for him are at the same time processes for denouncing the incorporation of people into “dehumanizing structures” (p. 255). Space in this article does not permit a full account of his position or its relevance to the discussion presented here of ways of nurturing Ubuntu as a variant of humanism. ⁶ What we have attempted to do in this article is offer an indication of how an Ubuntu-inspired adult education process likewise denounces social structures in which people are treated as “things”—to use Freire’s (1994, p. 255) terminology—and at the same time announces (and works toward instantiating) alternative potential in the social fabric. ⁷ We concur with Freire that educators need to “strive for an ever greater clarity” as to what “illumines the path of his [or her] action” (p. 256). It is in this vein that we have sought to offer further illumination as to the Ubuntu-inspired theoretical basis that can serve as a “path to action” for educators (in dialogue with others). We also concur with Freire that paths that are made are not to be regarded as simply transportable across different social contexts and that paths have to be created in the light of (joint) definitions of historical moments—as emphasized too by Arnett (2002).

A final issue that we wish to reflect on is the connection between the European critical theoretical tradition that has been used to guide certain humanistically oriented adult learning theories across the globe and a more Africentric account of adult learning theories that are specifically rooted in what Brookfield (2003) calls “the traditions and cultures of the African continent” (p. 164). (To locate European critical theory, Brookfield mentions authors such as Habermas, Marcuse, Gramsci, and Foucault—see 2003, p. 155.) In comparing these perspectives, Brookfield comments that Africentricists writing in the context of the United States argue that drawing on Eurocentric bodies of work—even those that focus on criticizing the commodification of adult learning whereby people are educated to fit in with capitalist structures—does not do sufficient justice to “the cultural traditions of Africa” (p. 164). Brookfield (2003) notes that in this context, Africentricists argue that “it is these traditions that should dominate theorizing on behalf of [in this case] African Americans” (p. 164). This is not to say that Africentricists regard “all things African” as “inherently superior” or that they wish to “denigrate other cultures and traditions,” but it is to say that the Africentric stance is meant to reverse the historical denigration of “all things African” by now placing them as central—in a context where otherwise Whiteness all too easily becomes the unacknowledged conceptual center (Brookfield, 2003, p. 167).

We argue that in the case of literacy programs in South Africa/Africa, educators would do well to assign centrality to the contribution that African traditions can make to reflecting on the quality of social living and being. Brookfield (2003) leaves in abeyance the question of whether a fusion between, say, European-inspired critical theory as a basis for adult learning theory and an Africentric approach to adult learning is either “feasible or desirable” (p. 167). But he does note that as it stands, the lifeworlds of people (for instance, in America, but also in other contexts) is already a fusion/intersection of different cultures—for example, in the case of African Americans, people can draw on African, Native American, and European cultures to define their identities and ways of living (Brookfield, 2003). This means that the borders between cultures are themselves permeable. We suggest that the issue is then not whether a fusion can be drawn out from diverse cultural traditions but whether a conversation between people seeking humanistically oriented paths to action is beneficial. We think it is, and we invite you to join us in this conversation.