Ubuntu: Opening to Another and the experience of the Other as Own Flesh

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Stellenbosch University, where she is the founding Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence and the Reparative Quest. She holds the South African National Research Foundation Chair in Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma. Her interests focus mainly on two strands of research. Her research interest and exploring what the “repair” of these transgenerational traumatic effects might mean. The first is intergenerational repercussions of historical trauma and the dehumanising experiences of oppression and violent abuse. For her second research area, she expands her earlier research on remorse and forgiveness to explore what she terms “reparative humanism” and its intersection with the African concept of Ubuntu. She holds an honorary Doctor of Theology from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.