Ubuntu is an African view that grounds societies that embrace communal ways of living. This means that one is not considered a human being unless one is concerned about the well-being of other people. One of the main characteristics of ubuntu is communality or communal well-being. This principle is based on the Nguni saying: Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu [A person is a person through other people]. Letseka (2012) postulates that ubuntu is based on the etiquette of humanity, which includes caring for each other’s well-being and reciprocating kindness. Louw (2003) sees ubuntu as more than just being who you are through others; he extends ubuntu to how people relate to others around them. Louw’s concept of ubuntu emphasises the importance of having a mutual understanding of how people treat each other. Different authors have defined ubuntu as the ethic of care (Waghid & Smeyers 2012) and ‘a theory of right action’ or ‘moral theory’ (Letseka 2000; Metz 2007; Teffo 1994), as a pedagogical principle (Letseka 2013) and as a constitutional and jurisprudence principle (Mahao 2010; Mokgoro 1998). As ubuntu concerns the way in which people treat each other, this article focuses mainly on the treatment of people with disabilities living in the Zulu cultural communities. The main research objective guiding the study was to establish how such people were treated. The research also sought to investigate how the traditional elders within these communities understood and practised ubuntu with regard to people with disabilities.

This article is divided into five sections. In the first section, I introduce the philosophy of ubuntu and how people with disabilities have been treated in the selected communities. In the second section, I describe the research methodology that guided this qualitative research study, which was conducted through oral histories and structured interviews. This section also presents the manner in which ethical considerations, sampling techniques and data analysis were tackled. In the third section, I present findings, using verbatim quotes from the research participants with the aim of indicating the link between ubuntu and disability. In the fourth section, I discuss the research findings, making some recommendations for how people with disabilities should be better included and treated, according to ubuntu principles. Lastly, a conclusion is drawn.

The exclusion of children with disabilities is not a practice limited to African society: Peter Singer, a bioethicist, argued that the trouble of disability for the child and the parents further outweighed emotional choices, judgements and the communities’ socio-economic realities (Singer 1992). Singer’s utilitarian argument did not go unchallenged as it was based on a negative perception of people with disabilities. Harriet McBryde Johnson, an activist with a disability, questions whether her existence with a disability causes her to live a miserable life. She asserts that people with disabilities have the same feelings as other people and also have their own unique ways of doing things, her main argument being that ‘the presence or absence of disability doesn’t predict quality of life’ (Johnson 2003).

In forming a basis for the position of this article, I first define the parameters within which the concept of inclusion is discussed. These include access, participation and school governance, curriculum and identity (Sayed et al. 2007). In this context, access would mean that people with disabilities participate meaningfully in all community activities. That would include the birth celebrations, initiation ceremonies, weddings, all forms of traditional dances, choosing marriage partners, becoming parents and grandparents. Participation in governance by such people would mean that they too can contribute towards lawmaking processes and that they can contest and be elected to leadership positions as well as have their views respected in the community. Curriculum, in the case of the community, refers to the different life stages that each child is initiated into and taught about through oral tradition and teachings hidden in idioms and proverbs. In the case of the AmaZulu, a child with a physical impairment would have to be afforded the opportunity to go through initiation. Because identity formation is a crucial element of any living human being, communities with ubuntu values would have to find ways of ensuring that their identity perceptions do not make those who differ from the norm feel devalued.

In discussing inclusion, one cannot avoid discussing what would amount to exclusion in a communal context. According to Sen (2000), exclusion concerns the way people with disabilities experience being among other people, how the former are excluded from participation in pedagogical, economic, social and political activities and are subjected to systemically engineered exclusion from equal development opportunities.

The views of community elders on how people with disabilities were treated, as collated from the KwaZulu-Natal areas of Umgungundlovu, eThekwini, kwaHlabisa and uMtubatuba, are presented in this article. The cohort of elders comprised three males and six females aged between 65 and 97. To understand the practices as expressed by the elders, I use Hannah Arendt’s (1958) lens of critical and political theory, with reference to humanness. Arendt (1958:32–33) argues that societies are made of distinctive human beings who form an organised entity. She postulates that in this structure there are powerful community members who determine the rules and regulations of how people should behave. In this regard, the lawmakers need to be clear on how the community should behave towards the vulnerable members of the community, including children, women and people with disabilities. Arendt suggests that community rules should be made with the realisation that human frailty is a universal phenomenon (Siebers 2007). This means that disability is not confined to certain people; anybody could find themselves having to deal with it in their family or at a certain stage of their life. Arendt makes a call to ensure that all community norms are based on the right to full political participation. This plea resonates with the principle of ubuntu as identified by Sayed et al. (2007), who assert that people with disabilities should also participate in governing societal practices.

Arendt’s existentialism is considered adequate as a lens to analyse the ubuntu philosophy among the Zulu culture. For Arendt’s existentialism to be able to operate, the societal system should recognise people with disabilities as equal beings within the community. For this to happen there should be differences in the way humanness is identified. Humanness would need to transcend ability and similarity in bodily features. Humanness would also need to accept multidiversity in terms of physical traits (skin complexion, height, weight, presence or non-presence of limbs, functional or non-functional limbs, etc.), sensory capacities (hearing, vision, etc.) and so on. Humanness, which the elders equated to ubuntu, should be about acceptance of another human being in all shapes and forms, affording people with disabilities the same care, dignity and teachings that will make Zulu society into abantu abaqotho [principled people with ubuntu values].

This article is based on qualitative data resulting from structured interviews conducted in the KwaZulu-Natal Province between February and March 2015. The sample of three elderly men and six elderly women between the ages of 65 and 100 who participated in the study was drawn through purposive sampling. While this article is based on data obtained from the said province, in particular, the wider study covered Southern African countries such as Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It also covered four provinces in South Africa: KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and North-West. The qualitative study is based on oral historical conversations, mainly structured interviews with a group of Zulu people from the four communities mentioned within KwaZulu-Natal.

According to Jewsiewicki and Mudimbe (1993), ‘oral historiographies from a sense of the past creates a link between the past, the present, and the future of Africa’. They further state, ‘oral historiographies have always been bearers of norms and of logical systems for the interpretation of the past’. Vansina (1985) points out the strength of using oral historiographies when documenting historical events from traditional societies. Traditional societies are known to be resourceful in narrating historic accounts, hence creating a link between ‘the past, the present and the future of Africa’ (Jewsiewicki & Mudimbe 1993). Vansina (2006) argues that those who can read and write nevertheless regard oral historiography as a valuable research method.

Initially, the researchers had planned to engage 20 elders, comprising 10 males and 10 females. However, ultimately they only engaged with nine elders consisting of six females and three males. Some of the elders originally identified were ill and could not articulate themselves clearly, while a few of the others were not available. Table 1 illustrates the elders’ pseudonyms, their real gender and age.

This section presents findings of the study, based on the views of elders, on how people with disabilities were treated in the traditional communities. Verbatim quotes are presented in order to demonstrate the authenticity of data and express the elders’ views in their own words. However, it must be noted that the verbatim quotes have been translated from the isiZulu language (the language spoken by the elders) into English.

The Zulu elders from four communities within KwaZulu-Natal reported that children with disabilities were killed, though there was no concrete moral value underpinning the action. The parents who had chosen to let their children live, while isolating them from the community activities, further denied the community a chance to gain a first-hand experience of how a person with a disability lives.

From the way the elderly spoke about disability, one can identify certain gender biases. It seems that female children were the ones who were mainly referred to when the exclusion of people with disabilities was discussed. In my view this constitutes violence against girls. Research indicates that women with disabilities and girls with disabilities experience violence and exclusion more than their male counterparts do (United Nations Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities 2015). In addition, cultural initiation into adolescence and adulthood among children with disabilities was explained in reference to the disabled girl child while nothing was said about the disabled boy child. Seemingly, gender played a role in the exclusion or inclusion of a child with a disability. Considering women with disabilities as unmarriageable enforces the gender stereotypes where unremunerated, and undervalued, productive and reproductive roles performed by women are a prerequisite for marriage.

Meanwhile, Ngubane-Mokiwa (2013) reveals that the negative perception and treatment of people with disabilities is not always because of cruelty but rather points to fear of the unknown. Some people have not had close contact with people with disabilities so they do not understand them and how they live. According to Kreitmair (2000:18) in his work In Fear of the Frail, Adolf Hitler of Germany viewed people with disabilities as a health threat because of the ‘evils of incurable illness and disability’. Hitler asserted that taking time to care for people with disabilities deprived the healthy ones of enough time to be productive for the benefit of the society and the country.

The analysis of the findings highlights a disturbing confusion as regards ubuntu among the Zulu communities researched. Though it is not clear from the elders’ responses as to how they felt about the exclusion of people with disabilities during those years, it was evident that their current perspectives were informed by modern values and beliefs about what it means to be humane. They may have performed inhumane practices on those with disabilities because their context at that time allowed them to. Consequently it is obvious that understanding and application of ubuntu changes with context. At the end of the study, one issue became clear: that there is a need to work with communities to renegotiate the meaning and application of ubuntu. There is also a need to restructure how societies respond to people with disabilities to achieve full inclusion.

This study has explored the inclusion and exclusion of people with disabilities among a group of Zulu people from four communities within KwaZulu-Natal. The findings indicated that people with disabilities were excluded from and by their communities. Their exclusion was because of their parents’ powerlessness in the face of tradition. This research then offers empirical evidence as well as a theoretical explanation for the process of their exclusion. Findings also indicate that the exclusion of people with disabilities was a misrepresentation and misinterpretation of ubuntu. Exclusion from society is oppression and it dehumanises those excluded. There is a need for traditional communities to conduct ongoing conversations on how vulnerable people can be guaranteed their human rights.