Published in Cricinfo, April 2009
“We are all at our best, our societies flourish most, when we co-operate in the spirit of what in our country we call ùbúntù, the essence of being human, when my humanity is caught up in your humanity. I wouldn’t know how to walk as a human being, I wouldn’t know how to speak as a human being, I wouldn’t know how to think as a human being, I wouldn’t know how to be human, unless I learnt it all from other human beings. I need other human beings in order to be human, and we say in our part of the world, in the spirit of ùbúntù, that a person is a person through other persons, that we are made for interdependence, we are made for complementarity, for I have gifts that you don’t have and you have gifts that I don’t have.
You could almost see God saying “Voilà”, rubbing his hands and saying “That is precisely why I created you different, not so that you should be separated, but different to know your need for one another”.
