Ubuntu as a valued capability for university students in South Africa

Abstract

Universities in South Africa have the potential to advance various dimensions of human development, including well-being. However, this  potential can be constrained by historical processes of oppression and the negation of indigenous ways of being and doing.  Applying the capabilities approach (Sen, 1999) as a normative framework for the outcomes of university education in the South African context, we argue for a focus on the centrality of capabilities (real freedoms) in assessing how well universities are doing in supporting  student well-being. We pay special attention to one capability which we see as architectonic for other freedoms, which is ubuntu.  Although ubuntu is generally understood as a moral philosophy, in this article we articulate it as a valued capability in the space of higher  education. Our argument is based on data collected through qualitative and participatory approaches in two longitudinal  research projects that were carried out between 2016 and 2021 with undergraduate students in different South African universities. In the  discussion of the findings, we explain how ubuntu underpins the ways students tend to relate to each other – as interdependent partners of a learning community, rather than as independent individuals who happen to be in the same learning environment. Building  on these descriptions of deeply relational ways of being at university, ways that embrace an African indigenous worldview, we argue that  creating the conditions for students to achieve the capability of ubuntu has decolonial potential.