“Celebrating Africa's Humanity” is the brand promise that was chosen by the Local Organising Committee to communicate to the world what will be in store for 2010 visitors. This begs the questions, what exactly is humanity and how shall South Africans deliver this promise to the world?
A leaf from Obama's speech book might provide some insights, as humanity is a concept that he elaborated on many times, and in particular during his keynote speech at the Democractic National Convention in Boston in July 2004.
In this speech he defined humanity as the “belief that we're all connected as one people... If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription drugs, and has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process that threatens my civil liberties.”
Obama concluded: “It is that fundamental belief, it is that fundamental belief, I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.”
In the same speech, Obama went on to expand on the prospects of a society that does not embrace humanity: “Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America.
“We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. In the end, that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?”
In a speech that was hailed by analysts as Obama's most inspirational speech to date, titled “A More Perfect Union” and held in Philadelphia in March 2008, he summed up the spirit of humanity: “In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world's great religions demand - that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother's keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister's keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”
When the new South Africa was born on 27 Spril 1994, the world was soon to learn Africa's very own version of humanity, termed ubuntu and many a time pronounced by our first president, Nelson Mandela, who once defined ubuntu as follows:
“A traveller through a country would stop at a village and he didn't have to ask for food or for water. Once he stops, the people give him food, entertain him. That is one aspect of Ubuntu but it will have various aspects. Ubuntu does not mean that people should not address themselves. The question therefore is: Are you going to do so in order to enable the community around you to be able to improve?”
Archbishop Desmond Tutu further elaborated on the application of ubuntu when he said: “A person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished.”
Maybe now is the time to embrace the 2010 brand promise and practice celebrating our own humanity by uniting the nation across the differences that divide us - and thereby showing a skeptical world that the Rainbow Nation that was born in 1994 is determined to showcase its very own brand of ubuntu to each and every visitor in 2010.
