 Good afternoon, I'm J. Fidel. This is Think Tech. This is transitional justice. Today, we're going to talk about Ubuntu with Ara Haleil. She joins us from Vienna. Hi, Ara. Hello, good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to be here with you. Thank you for being here. So tell us a little about yourself. You're with Project Expedite Justice, but what's your schooling? What's your orientation? What have you done? And what are you doing now? Yes, I am Palestinian from Nazareth. I am in Vienna for my studies. And I am working on Project Expedite Justice on Ethiopian projects. And that's what I'm doing now. We work with people in Africa and so on. So why are you in Vienna? Well, I'm in Vienna. I'm doing my PhD in Indigenous Arts, so Indigenous League of Studies. So I'm in Vienna for this reason. Yeah. Is it true that the best cold white wine in the world is in Vienna? It is good if they have nice white wines. But I understand it's white wine. It's also a lot of good music in Vienna, am I right? It depends on your taste again. It's like they are good in their classical music. You have Beethoven living here, Mozart being here. So in regard to classical music, it's one of the best places. And these are one of the two big names, the big names. But it depends on your taste. So I don't like pop Austrian music. It's not a big thing, I think. So we're going to talk today about Ubuntu, which just requires a little definition. It's a philosophy. It's a way of looking at things in Africa, mostly Southern Africa. And I want to know how that connects with your PhD in Vienna. As I said before, my PhD is Indigenous Arts, but Ubuntu is more a matter of having interest in it. I am a research independent Indigenous people. But I like Indigenous wisdom and Indigenous philosophy. It's something of an interest of mine. And I was always, many people, fascinated and interested on the South African struggle against apartheid. And the people related to it. And one of these people is Desmond Tutu. And with him passing away on December 26, it was a chance to look again about this person's legacy. And the way he influenced South Africa, he was an archbishop. And he was the chair of the truce and speaking of transition of just today, the chair appointed by Mandela to be the chair of the truce and reconciliation commission. And he was brilliant to bring this Ubuntu and use it in this commission. And as an archbishop, he gave it also a Christian interpretation. And you see how Indigenous philosophy and moral perspective, like Ubuntu, was interpreted from Christian perspective. And Christianity was also interpreted through Ubuntu. So there is interconnection here. And what he says with Ubuntu, Ubuntu means that you are because of who we are. And there is this interconnectedness. Your humanity is related to other people's humanities. And you are a subhuman if you are not connected to the community affected by it and who you are because of your interaction with the community. So he took this moral perspective, this way of thinking, and brought it to the commission and said that your humanity is related also to the perpetrator's humanity. And when you come to the commission and forgive this perpetrator, you actually give him the chance and open for him the way to regret and to be back again and being part of society. So we see how this Ubuntu philosophy was complementing actually Christianity and shared some kind of values. So he was brilliant enough to bring this local indigenous wisdom beliefs when thinking. And in this way, he also was able to touch a deeper place with the people involved and so on. So Ubuntu eventually means we are who I am because of who we are. And this interconnectedness is supposed to drive people to a more human wholeness and to another way of humanity that we aim to all of us. So this is Ubuntu. Yes, OK, that's helpful to start. But it sounds like Ubuntu is an indigenous philosophy in Africa, particularly southern Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, and especially South Africa, that it wasn't originally connected with Christianity. Maybe the bishop did his part to connect it with Christianity. And it is forgiving. It is kind and gentle. It is perfect for a truth and reconciliation panel. It was the perfect addition, the perfect model for the truth and reconciliation panel to follow. What I don't understand is exactly how Christianity gets in there because you could have Ubuntu without Christianity at all. It's an African philosophical phenomenon, isn't it? Yes, you can say one thing in many ways. And it can be said that when you talk about interconnectedness and a humanity and the interrelation like you're being affected and becoming who you are as a result of interaction with other people, it can be said through this African philosophy. It can be said also in other ways in other cultures. But eventually, it's the same essence. Desmond Tutu was, he said it. And when an archbishop comes and look at it and give it this Christian package too, so in this way it became related to Christianity too. And it can be said alone through indigenous philosophy, but it can also be said through African card of Christianity that Desmond Tutu passed and represented and actually was able to touch the feelings of the Christian people in the commission, in addition to the feeling of the African people in the commission. And this way also when you talk to the people from their way of seeing things, from what they feel, from their values, you are also able to facilitate and move these people and do this change that happened through this transition of justice in the commission. So he was a bishop. He was a what, Catholic bishop in South Africa. Is there a large contingent of Catholic South Africans? Is that a substantial part of the population? In South Africa, yes, there is. But we ask, people are, he was asked actually, they thought about it in the commission. And one of the ladies who was with him in this commission, they thought whether they want to give this, he's coming with his religious gown and they're coming to the commission. And he's a very dominant person in South Africa and so on. And they asked themselves whether they want to give the commission this Christian way or Christian settings or package. And he said, this is what the people want. So it is also very related to what the people want and their way of seeing things and so on. So it is also interrelations between two things. You cannot separate the culture in one area and the indigenous culture, indigenous wisdom and the values, cultural values. And also the religion, when it comes to specific culture, it is interpreted through this culture also. So you have some kind of common interrelation affecting the way people think and feel and so on. So I know that the principles are harmony, peace, kindness, all those very positive values. But it's something like, as you said, I am me, but I am also part of a greater community. I am defined by my connectedness to the greater community. And I cannot be a good me without being connected to the greater community. This all speaks of peace and tranquility, of respect for your fellow person, a fellow human being. It speaks of the highest moral order. And yet, we don't find that all over Africa. We find in central Africa, we find coups. We find military hunters. We find genocides. I'm sure you're fully aware of the violations of human rights and atrocities and war crimes. How do you connect up Ubuntu with that? Well, we always have our moral standards and we try to get to there to achieve it. And reality can be much more complicated and driven by different interests and so on. So eventually, this is what this moral perspective aim to. But it's not necessarily that we are able to get there. But with leaders like Desmond Tutu and his ability to read what might be used and affect like this, how you can lead a society out of its trauma and to go on and live together after the apartheid regime and atrocities, he was able to do this. So we don't always have, and this is his brilliance too. So we don't always have leaders who are able to read what's going on in the society to understand it, to understand what the people need, what the people want and to make them focus on the good thing out of them and how they can take it. So this is my answer as far as I can answer your question. I know that's hard. It wasn't an easy question for sure. And now Bishop Tutu, he was advocating for Ubuntu in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he was member of. And I just wonder if that was successful. It wasn't successful either on the commission in terms of finding forgiveness, right, because Ubuntu really speaks of forgiveness on a personal level and on a community level too. Was he successful in advocating for Ubuntu in South Africa in general? How do people see him, see his legacy as contributing to the philosophical evolution of South Africa? When you look, when we talk about transitional justice, it's usually you look at sometimes in some instances you have half of the population is somehow related to the perpetrator and the other half is related to the victim. And you have to find a way to help this society move on together and from this trauma they went through and live together as a society. So one needs to ask what are the alternatives that were there? That is one question that you have to ask and whether a conventional justice perspective such as court and the proceedings can help this society heal, clean the wounds and move on. And I think it's a very costly process. When we talk about the transitional justice, the committee, the commission in South Africa, they had 22,000 testimonies and it was broadcasted in public TV. So all the people could be part of this process and see what's going on. So if people were indicted and you had to seek the legal truth, usually this differs from objective truth, it can be very traumatic to the victim because in many instances you cannot prove what actually happened. And these witnesses might be also more traumatized by testifying a cross-examined and so on. And eventually the people will be acquitted and you will not know the truth. So amnesty and also these committees enabled the people to know or to get closer to the truth and what happened and let the truth kind of free them as much as possible. So the alternative is very costly. It can also further fragment the society and polarize it and eventually not seek the goals of such commissions. So that's one thing, speaking about like and then when you look at the community and you know the people who are there, as we said before, and they can relate to what's going on from their worldview from their culture and so on. So you have much more impactful results and you might, in most of these cases, as I said, 22,000 testimonies and be able to know what happened. And many victims actually were able to know what happened like with people who were murdered during this apartheid period and they would never have this option to know what happened unless you had this committee. So retrospectively, if you examine it and knowing what the alternative can provide, I think this meant to end. And it's for sure, as I said, you heard 22,000 testimonies. So you have lots of critics about it and some people would say, OK, that helped people run away from punishment. And some others would say, OK, you can't force people to forgive. And many people were not content with it. But in the sum and looking retrospectively on it, I think it was a huge success. And this 22 is actually very appreciated for it. And when you look at it today, I think it's brilliant. And these elements of alternative ways to a conflict resolution and so on are more acknowledged in the last two decades, also in criminal justice systems. When you're talking about people who need to have a continuous relationship, such as family disputes. Or when you're talking about juvenile justice, like criminal justice related to juvenile, when you see that this person can be changed and you get him to meet with his victim and try to get him back to society and to be part of society. And you have also more doubts about the conventional criminal justice system. So I think it's from a different perspective and different ways looking at it. I think it is something that you need to appreciate this new tutorial about. Yeah, well, OK. I mean, even if you only have a certain percentage of people actually actively, personally forgiving the atrocities, that's better than having nobody forgive the atrocities. So that leaves a good result, I'd say. And we'd all agree that Bishop Tutu had a lot to do with that result. And if he was driven and embraced Ubuntu, then Ubuntu had a certain influence on that result. I take all of that. But here's the question. So you have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that is charged with trying to find out what happened, to explain to people who may have been involved on both sides of the coin what really happened. It's valuable in the sense of evoking forgiveness. This is not only in South Africa, it's in other places in Africa, for sure, and the world, I think. But it has a defined life. In other words, it's not going to go on forever. It's going to end. And certainly the one in South Africa ended. So what happens after a Truth and Reconciliation Commission however successful ends? Is that a satisfactory result? Or are there issues that are left over that need to be addressed later on? Do we have to have more than one given Truth and Reconciliation Commission to deal with a period in which so many people were injured and killed? Like you have to move on and look forward and try to build and develop. And if we're talking about what like if talking about talking in language of trauma and when community has a collective trauma and so on, you need to find a way to get out of it. And I think in South Africa and look forward and try to clean the wounds and look forward, you can't relive it and stay there forever. Memory is good and memorials are good. And as Simone Will said, destruction of the past is the worst of all crimes. But in order to go out from such a trauma and move on, you have to look forward and see how you can get these people living in one community and find the common things together and to have a just policy and governments in able living together in just way and so on. So it's a process that it has to be continued in another way, not in another true community, but in government policies, recognizing the need to live together in a fair way and respectful to the human rights of the people, to their culture values, and always to take out the good things through these policies. And it depends on eventually on the governments that comes afterwards. Even Desmond Tutu had his fix on the South African government later and things didn't go the way he wanted. So I hope I was able to answer your question. Yes, absolutely. And so if I want to avail myself of the Ubuntu philosophy now today, 2022, if I am concerned, for example, that we may be slipping back in some ways and I want to reconnect with Ubuntu, whether it's through Christianity or through the indigenous appreciation of it, how do I do that? Is there an organization, a church on the corner, somebody I can call a right to? Is there a group? How does it exist? How is it made available to me? How does it affect my community in South Africa? I think we can talk more about actually it was interesting to see how these South African anti-apartheid activists were able to resist also to have solidarity with other oppressed people in the world and saying their freedom is part of our freedom. Their humanity is part of our humanity. And as I said before, it's one thing. This interconnectedness, it exists in South Africa or in another communities. If you're talking about the village, town, country, but also we are a global community. So if you say that you are because of who we are, so it's more clear today and expanded that everyone will come and say, I am who I am because I am part of this global community. So it exists. Wanto is inspiring and helps you see this way. You can see it through Christianity. You can see it through other religions. And I'm not aware of all the indigenous wisdom you have in the world or all the religions. But it can be said in many ways. Like humans also sometimes intuitively have this. You can learn a lot from indigenous wisdom and relate to it also through modern or other sciences and modern philosophy and so on. So we are today who we are and I am who I am because of my global, because of our global community. So even everyone who is like in Hawaii or me here in Vienna or someone in Athens or in Jordan or wherever he is because of this interaction with the global community. If we can only find the universality of that thought because that is not really consistent with what happens in many places in the world. You know, there's a movie by Ai Wei Wei called Human Flow and this is a movie now four or five years old but it speaks of 65 million people behind barbed wire somewhere in the world and growing all the time in a sort of seventh circle kind of experience. You know, I would like to feel connected with them and I would like to feel they are connected with me but in the middle, there's Bob Wire. It's very troubling. And I want to ask you, we have a few minutes left actually Ai Wei Wei and I want to ask you one question that came up when I looked at the Ubuntu philosophy and that's this. Query whether Ubuntu is influential all over Africa, not only in South Africa, but in, you know, Central Africa, East Africa, West Africa, even North Africa, whether people think of it whether people live by it and so forth. And that's half of my question. The other half is one of the most interesting aspects of Ubuntu is that it's post-colonial and that it has, it is a continuation of the strengths that people gained in breaking away from colonial relationships, colonialism. And I wonder if you can talk to me about that too. So first talk to me about how influential it is in all of Africa and for that matter, the Middle East and talk to me about how it relates to colonialism. Is it a way to deal with the damage created by colonialism or not? Well, Middle East and Africa are not the same and how influential it's always depends on the people who try to focus on this potential of seeing the good way and the opportunity to move and see things through these values. And we're living in the world that most of our values are not coming from moral perspectives, but we value more other things like money and so on. And colonialism was also driven by this. So when you wanted to resist colonialism, so you're usually resisted and the local communities resisted through values and so on that contradict value on other things like the human rights of the local communities, their culture, their uniqueness, their right to determine their lives and so on, and their right to self-determination and so on. So it's values on other things. And we're talking today about globalization, most of the world values on other things, but eventually, as I said before, we are de facto interconnected. And if we look, for example, at Corona, you see how physically, like you have the physical consequences of this interconnectedness, like people are feeling it in their bodies and in their pockets and so on and not talking about the spiritual level or the value levels and so on. So de facto, that's what's going on. We are interconnected. And it can be also a way of seeing as transitional global justice because like we're still in relation to colonialism, we are still not seeing people, colonized nations are still paying the price of colonialism and they are still affected by it. So it's also a good way to see that eventually who they are is affected by colonialism, by this global interaction and what happened through colonialism. And it can be a good way to facilitate some kind of, it is very idealistic and so on, but when we work in human rights, we value these things, we value the people, we value the moral aspects and so on. We don't value weapons and we don't value money and trade and so on. And it's very challenging today to value people and their dignity and eventually also through international trade and so on, which also is a continuation of colonialism and transnational cooperation and so on. People are actually affected everywhere by like, if you put sugar in your coffee in the morning, you don't know where it came from and if it came from planting it with sugar in Africa while evacuating the indigenous people and doing some kind of atrocities while evacuating them. So eventually we are interconnected and we are still going through another kind of colonialism and I think Ubuntu can be a way to see how we as a global community needs to have, need to look at the suffering of other people and treat it as our suffering and to try to facilitate some kind of global transition of justice after colonialism. And if we say that it ended and it's not affecting the people anymore, we light ourselves because people are still paying a price of colonialism. So this, I hope I answered also. Yes, not only did you answer it, but I agree with what you said. Just a couple of other thoughts before we go and that is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had to make a record. Just as they had to make a record in Nuremberg in the war trials after World War II, and they did make a record and there's an enormous amount of material that came out of those trials and there's an enormous amount of material that came out of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission not only in South Africa, but elsewhere to me that's one of the benefits of having a commission like that is that not only do you hear the evidence and educate people at the time, make it public, but you also keep a record for later. And because the byword is always never again. A lot of people feel that never again is happening again in Europe where you live right now, not necessarily in Vienna, but in other places around Europe that is an emerging right wing that are reminiscent of the 30s and never again could get to be again. And so, although we don't have the time to talk about that now, I was telling you about a movie that I saw that really struck me called Jusui Karl, which is a story of young people in various cities in Europe being swept into that right wing movement right now, mostly against migrants from the Middle East, from Africa. And if you have the time later, I would like to have a discussion with you. Another show, if you don't mind, are we? We could talk about your observation in Vienna and your understanding of the way things are working in Europe and whether the principles of Ubuntu would be useful in dealing with this in Europe. We don't wanna have another Nuremberg, do we? Anyway, what are your thoughts you wanna leave with people today about Ubuntu and your work, you know, in looking at it? Sorry, can you repeat the question I didn't understand? What are your thoughts, what message do you wanna leave with people about your work and your understanding of Ubuntu and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa? Yeah, I think people like this one too because Muslim and they are very inspirational and they were able to influence their people with their belief and commitment to humanity and the dignity of each person. So if you take this thinking with you in everything, I think it's really important and when you appreciate your humanity through others, it also helps you to live in a more peaceful community and it sounds very idealistic today and since, as you said, the world is moving in different directions but we always have to keep this commitment and this belief and that's people who usually work in human rights and choose to work in this field, have this solid commitment and they can have it through Ubuntu or through human rights and other people who may have it through religions but eventually you always have to see the good part of it and to stick to it. Yeah, strikes me that we could use a little more Ubuntu here in the United States, don't you think, these days? I think everyone can use it more because it just respects humanity and it says to me that the original, the authentic self of you is a very good version of humanity and you always have to be committed to it through what you do and how it affects other people and it can be related to your interactions in your small community, your family, your wider community and as I tried to say before, it's also, if you look at ourselves as a global community, it's also a good way to see it, especially when we're talking about international movement of commodities and so on and how we actually affect in our acts other people in other places in a way that we are usually not so aware of it but eventually in everything we do we are affecting and affected, so. Well, we're talking about a lot of the third person, I just have one last question for you. Do you live your life in accordance with the principles of Ubuntu? I actually, it wasn't called as Ubuntu for me but as I said before, it's one essence and you can reach it from different ways. You can reach it from human rights, you can reach it through religions and so on and for me, I try to, but eventually we have our weaknesses and limitations but it's something I think you should aim to, even if it was not defined as Ubuntu, I always believed in this interconnectedness between people. Even Einstein also said it's an illusion, it's an optical illusion that we are separated but eventually we are interconnected anyway and if we believe in it and if we actually realize it and I think Corona manifests it that we are affecting and affected so it gives you more responsibility to act anyway and to think about the consequences of your acts and you focused on the negative things that's going on but another positive things are going on too and the realization and the need of fair trade is more, people are more aware of it and in another ways it's becoming people are more aware of it today and the need of appreciating this interconnectedness maybe they are phrasing it in human rights language but it can be phrased in many ways and Ubuntu is one of the ways that people can look at it and every culture acts its way to look at these people to look at these issues. Arwa Hillel who joins us from Vienna who's with Project Expedite Justice and a PhD candidate on the question of Ubuntu in South Africa and elsewhere. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, thank you, but I'm not candid, it's an Ubuntu, I am interested in Ubuntu. Of course. I'm just, thank you Arwa.