Session V – Botho/Ubuntu as Basis for Intergenerational Dialogue

How do we teach and practice Botho/Ubuntu in 2017? As a stage and film actor at the intersection of performance and academia, I advocate for the inclusion of African history in the African classroom as an exercise in Botho/Ubuntu. A key trademark in my work on stage and in film has been the endeavor to commune with our ancient institutions in order to contemporize them while keeping their original ethical and moral Botho/Ubuntu core. For instance, based on our kgota system of the democratic village court, I convene many Batswana and Africans of my generation in a digital kgota on social media platforms where we address present African youth challenges in the fashion of our ancestors who placed emphasis on therisanyo, or consultation as a mode of social operation. When our nation marked thirty-five years since the death of our founding President Sir Seretse Khama, I called a digital kgota, #SirSeretse35 through which many of my compatriots were able to hear the audio voice of Sir Seretse for the first time, to do Botho/Ubuntu with our elders. In face of an obsolete colonial curriculum still being taught in Botswana, and Africa as a whole, this year I have called a continental kgota, #UprightAfrican, a social media space where we Africans re-assess and re-imagine our education system in a manner that does Botho/ Ubuntu to those who came before, and builds self-knowledge for generations that we will never see.