Ubuntu as an Eco-Social Welfare Ethics in Antjie Krog's A Change of Tongue

From Aristotle and Epicurus in Ancient Greece to Kant’s speculations on the pursuit of happiness and Jeremy Bentham’s and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian principles, the notion of ‘well-being’ has always been crucial for Western ethics and thought. Nowadays, however, an important and in many ways alternative contribution is to be found in non-Eurocentric philosophies and worldviews, such as (South)African Ubuntu. Variously defined as an ethics of reciprocity or a collective onto-epistemology, Ubuntu has played a decisive role in the decolonisation and restructuring process in post-apartheid South Africa, stimulating reflections which have also involved the aesthetic and literary domains. In line with recent studies that address Ubuntu as both a new humanist approach and a relational eco-philosophy, this paper aims to highlight the possible interconnections between Ubuntu and a modern concept of well-being in A Change of Tongue (2003) by Afrikaner writer Antjie Krog. The pursuit of well-being (at a personal, social and ecological level) is featured here as the outcome of a radical transformation, involving both a redefinition of human relationships – in which self-realisation is inextricably bound up with the respectful acknowledgment of otherness – and the notion of an inter-species dialogue that stresses the importance of environmental health and communities’ interdependence.