The Philosophy of Ubuntu and the Call to "Kill the Boer"
19 May 2025
By Dr Adi Schlebusch
The essence of the African philosophy of Ubuntu is that our humanity is inherently dependent on our relationship to those who share this humanity with us through that relationship. A person only becomes truly human by means of their harmonious connection to other people. In other words, Ubuntu is the ultimate antithesis to not only all forms of individualism, but to all individuality and even distinctiveness itself. Indeed, it goes so far as to call for the abolition of any meaningful individuality and distinctiveness altogether, as each one is only human insofar as they are absorbed into the collective whole of humanity.
The very limited merits of Ubuntu lies in its emphatic rejection of the liberal notion that each individual is sovereign over their own life. After all, we are born into a family, for instance, and every person on earth is tied to their biological mother or father. Even adopted individuals are, in some way, bound to their biological parents. This is evident in the fact that adopted children are rarely indifferent toward their biological parents. However, we also exist in other God-given social spheres, such as the bond with our particular people and place, the religious bond we share with all believers in Christ, and also the bond we share with all humanity. Ubuntu is correct to emphasize this universal bond that all people share, but the major flaw in this philosophy lies in its monistic idea that the person who does not assimilate into the whole, who does not merge with the masses—that this person is not truly human.
This implies that in building the multicultural South African nation-state, as envisioned by the likes of Ubuntu-adherents such as Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela, there is no room for whites who refuse to be absorbed into the larger black collective. Those who wish to preserve their culture and identity, or who exclude others in any way—for example, by claiming that faith in Jesus Christ is a prerequisite for salvation, or by stating that those who do not believe in Jesus are under God’s judgment—are disrupting and threatening the unity of the whole. According to Ubuntu, violating this unity equates to denying the human dignity of those excluded. For instance, if we declare yourself to be a Christian Boer, you effectively undermine the human dignity of everyone who is not a Christian Boer—you “dehumanize” them.
Yet, crucially, Ubuntu also works in the opposite direction: if we refuse to merge with the masses, we also dehumanize ourselves. If we do not become part of the broader black African nation and instead seek to preserve our own identity and culture, then we are not truly human either. This explains why many black people in South Africa feel emboldened to sing the “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” song, because Boers, Afrikaners, who refuse to assimilate into the masses representing the Afronormative whole, are not considered to be essentially human. They may be potentially human, but not essentially. This is why, according to Ubuntu, the liberation struggle against so-called "white supremacy" liberates not only the oppressed, but also the oppressor by restoring the humanity of both.
According to Ubuntu, we only become human through others, and as long as we exclude anyone—whether from our school, church, or our people—we miss the essence of humanity and as such we are not worthy of human dignity. In stark contrast, the Christian faith confesses that humanity and human dignity are rooted in the fact that we are created by God in His image (Genesis 1:26). Humans stand above animals and plants because we alone are created in God’s image—this is where the dignity of all people lie: in our relationship to God as sovereign Creator. We do not become human through our relationships with others—we are already human. Our relationships with others are, however, a manifestation of our humanity. The essence of humanity is not violated, as Ubuntu claims, if we refuse to integrate and assimilate into the collective. Nor is it undermined if we seek to preserve our own language, culture, and identity. On the contrary, our unique culture and language are integral to our humanity, as this is how God, the Creator of heaven and earth, made us.
Western rationalism, at the dawn of the Enlightenment, declared, “I think, therefore I am.” The African philosophy of Ubuntu claims, “I am part of the whole, therefore I am.” Both philosophies fail to recognize the God-given nature of human existence and identity. And while the latter heresy is indeed distinctly African, it also has had a great impact in the United States, where e.g. Elizabeth Bagley, who served as the Biden administration's ambassador to Brazil, proposed Ubuntu as a framework for American foreign policy.
God did not create potential humans who become human through others, as Ubuntu asserts. God created actual humans who are human because He made us in His image. This is who we are—even that which makes us different from others, that which distinguishes us, is an integral part of our God-given humanity. Adam, after all, was a human and a man before there were any other people, men, or women on earth. While liberalism completely atomizes the individual, Ubuntu advocates for a type of monistic social order where the reality of human existence is reduced to a singular, unified whole, with no fundamental distinctions. This is why the call to "kill the Boer" is often accompanied by the call to "cut the throat of whiteness," because as long as whiteness exists, distinctions exist, and in Ubuntu distinctions are seen as fundamentally disruptive to the Afronormative whole.
While Ubuntu claims that humanity becomes a reality through people, the Bible teaches that humanity is a God-given reality. A person does not become human by surrendering their uniqueness and merging into the collective of humanity, as the philosophies of Ubuntu and Confucius suggest. On the contrary, the rich diversity of humanity—embodied in different families, communities, peoples, cultures, and languages—gives expression to the creativity with which God purposefully designed us as humans.