Practices and discourses of ubuntu: Implications for an African model of disability?

BACKGROUND

Southern African scholars and activists working in disability studies have argued that or is a part of their world view.

OBJECTIVES

Thinking seriously about as a shared collective humanness or social ethics, means to examine how Africans have framed a struggle for this shared humanity in terms of decolonisation and activism.

METHOD

Three examples of applications of are given, with two mainly linked to making explicit Firstly, is linked to making visible the invisible inequalities for a common humanity in South Africa. Secondly, it becomes correlated to the expression of environmental justice in West and East African countries.

RESULTS

An African model of disability that encapsulates is correlated to how Africans have illustrated a social ethics of a common humanity in their grassroots struggles against oppression and disablement in the 20th century. also locates disability politically within the wider environment and practices of sustainability which are now important to the post-2105 agenda, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the (UN) Sustainable Development Goals linked to climate change.

CONCLUSION

A different kind of political action linked to social justice seems to be evolving in line with . This has implications for the future of disability studies.