Dispensing with the Occult

Theorising Ubuntu as a Pagan Ethics of Migration

Abstract

This paper situates its discussion of the relationship between botho (ubuntu) and migration in South Africa after 1994. It asks whether botho (ubuntu) can respond to the vulnerability migrants face in South Africa after apartheid. It claims that botho (ubuntu) has potential to address the vulnerability migrants face but only if the underlying assumptions informing freedom after apartheid find orientation away from rational calculation to nature. When nature informs the understanding of freedom, botho (ubuntu) appears as a new hospitality that counters state conferred forms for hospitality. The consequence of this is the orientation of freedom to care for those the crossing of borders makes vulnerable.