Ubuntu

Rooted in the Bantu oral traditions of southern and central Africa, the concept predates written records — but its first academic articulation came when Stanlake Samkange published Hunhuism or Ubuntuism in 1980. Desmond Tutu brought it to global audiences through South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (1996–2003), invoking the Zulu-Xhosa proverb Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu — "a person is a person through other people" — as a moral foundation for post-apartheid healing.