Using Ubuntu-Bulamu in research

Abstract

There are questions about using Ubuntu-Bulamu in research.  I’ve been fortunate to publish a paper on bridging between Ubuntu and Western paradigms in research, and I went into that quite deeply.  However, I want to advise those for students that in your research, it is not a question of choosing Ubuntu-Bulamu.  I think it is a question of validity.  When you do research, you must use methodologies, philosophies, and whatever, which are valid for that context.  I heard this when I was at Rhodes University in South Africa, and I remember having had to actually argue with my supervisor there at Grahamstown.  When I went out to investigate the adoption of ICTs in South African schools, and I discovered that the Western-based paradigms were not applicable because the people we are dealing with were Bantu people whose interrogation of what you are trying to research happens away from you.  It happens in their communities.  You give them questionnaires.  They’ll carry those questionnaires back to their communities, engage with their chiefs, with their friends, with sometimes even in pubs.  So, you are absent from the actual research that you need, the responses that you need.  So, you have to be part of them.  I said if I am to get valid responses, I have to go to those pubs.  I have to go to those communities, sit with the chiefs, get their view of what we are trying to do, and that they cannot share unless you are a part of them, unless you are Ubuntu.  So, contextually, I had to use Ubuntu as a philosophy, and I’ve written quite a bit about it.  The only thing I wanted to point out here, the choice of using Ubuntu is not just a choice.  It is a requirement of validity when you are working within Bantu communities.  That’s the way I see it.  Anyway, go onto this.  As you can see, and it happens quite often, you come – you start with one idea and then you find that what you are trying to write about is not actually the title you give out.  We changed titles.  So, I ended up with Salvaging African Sustainable Development through Ubuntu-Bulamu, and of course, Ubuntu-Bulamu is the version of Ubuntu or Obuntu in my country here in Uganda [where I am] which is Ubuntu-Bulamu in South Africa.  So, the idea I have here is really that our development sustainably is linked with our Indigenous Knowledge System with our environment and community, wherein I mean communities beyond human beings because it includes animals and plants and everything that is around us.  And it is also linked with our ability to secure our environment and adding value to our resources using our own values, because again, what we have seen is the values added appeal to the foreigners most of the time. 

HOW TO REFERENCE USING ASWDNET STYLE

Muwanga-Zake, J. W. F. (2024). Using Ubuntu-Bulamu in research. Inaugural Ubuntu Lecture delivered on 25 November 2022. African Journal of Social Work, 14(3), 166-173. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ajsw.v14i3.9

Visit journal website: https://ajsw.africasocialwork.net