Afrophobia and Belongingness: Why Ubuntu Fails and Conversationalism Works

For a long time, some African thinkers have sought to project communalism—or, more specifically, ubuntu—as the face of social life in African thought. Unfortunately, rather than emphasizing ubuntu, the reality of things in Africa portrays contextualization and exclusion in some of its most destructive form. One of the more prominent examples of this is the Afrophobic sentiments that have pervaded and continue to pervade the continent. Often, ubuntu is touted as the solution to these types of problems since it emphasizes belongingness and a certain camaraderie that involves mutual caring and sharing. However, this article proposes conversationalism as an alternative to ubuntu, which is too bordered, in one sense, or too utopic, in another. It begins by properly mapping out a general overview of the sociopolitical and existential context in which most Africans live today. It then shows how the current iteration of ubuntu fails. Finally, borrowing from conversationalism, it proposes arumaristics (or creative struggle) as the more viable solution to the problem of Afrophobia and other related forms of exclusion.