**4.** *Ubuntu* **as a Solution for Addressing Problems of Messaging with Vaccine Hesitancy and Refusal**

The threat of Christocapitalism, independent of the extent to which it is in fact pervasive in an African setting, invokes a deep historical memory, warning of religious traditions in which a Judeo-Christian character sanctions individual liberty and self-reliance over the needs of the body politic:

The prophets were not social revolutionaries. Rather, they were religious conservatives deeply committed to the divinely established constitution of their nation, the body of laws believed by the people to have been delivered at Sinai by their God, Jahweh ... [T]hey were ordinary mortals equipped with keen social and political insight, able to discern how constitutional violations would cause social divisions, the loss of national strength, and, ultimately foreign conquest and domination ... The Book of Numbers (33:54) depicts a division of the land taking place at the time of the Israelites' entry into it from Jordan in which holdings were given to each of the twelve tribes according to their size (and then) distributed by lot to each kin group ... Once distributed, land became an unalienable sacred inheritance. (Green 2019)

Following from this Biblical foundation, in modern times, Jeffrey Stout offers the following through reference to Mill:

... Western liberal societies (embrace) the two key theses of John Stuart Mill's *On Liberty*: (1) our conduct can be divided into self-regarding and other-regarding acts; (2) while other-regarding actions are to be regulated by the principle of harm, self-regarding actions, ' . . . *the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign*'(author's italics). According to this way of thinking, risky behaviour in the middle of a pandemic (should be allowed) ... Mandatory face-masking is considered an aggressive and dangerous extension of automobile-seatbelt and motorcycle-helmet legislation (Nussbaum 2003). Jeffrey Stout ... describes Emersonian perfectionism as '*an ethics of virtue or self-cultivation that is always in the process of projecting a higher conception of self to be achieved and leaving one's achieved self* ... *behind*'. (author's italics) (Stout 2004)

Colonial powers which adhered to this "Every-Man-for-Himself-And-The-Devil-Take-The-Hindmost" approach to dealing with reform in post-colonial Africa were correspondingly not seen to take the autochthonous population's interests first. It is hard, if you are a white, European or North American, well-meaning person, not to think of a sequence of events, that goes: "Black Africa (Poor) + White European/American Powers (Rich) = Whites Go to Africa to help Poor Black Disease-Ridden Africans and Give Them What They Need". It is the baffling question of "Why-Do-They-Not-Want-What-We-Offer?" that trips up the well-meaning proselyte. But, under the self-asserting noise of benevolent white neo-colonialism, there is, and always has been, a quiet African voice repeating one simple word: "Ubuntu". *Ubuntu*, as defined by Bishop Tutu, pertains to the "the solitary human being [who] is a contradiction in terms", because that person is never one by oneself. (Tutu 2011) It is the alternative to an individualism that will not work as a successful ideological unit or norm of motivation so easily in an African setting.

We may examine vaccine hesitancy in sub-Saharan Africa in light of this understanding of Ubuntu, according to which "people depend on one another for the full realization of their humanity". As Bell and Metz clarify:

The word ... originates in the Bantu languages and traces (back to a) precolonial life that was characterized by the following: people lived in small oral societies in which they could know everyone else in their group; shared rituals had elevated significance; livelihood revolved around the land, held in common and allocated according to need or clan membership; helping family had especial priority, but there was moral obligation to aid the community and indeed strangers ... wedding and procreating were duties; sources of wisdom, the elderly were believed to persist after death, so that continued interaction was possible; people also identified with non-human animals and the land, spiritually imbuing them. (Bell and Metz 2011)

As one widely circulated, almost Cartesian, formulation puts it: "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am" ... (ibid.). Vaccination programs, as introduced by Western actors, never seemed to be about a *people*, but rather about the fate of particular individuals poised to become vaccinated. Such messaging does not translate well into a metaphysical account of human existence which asserts that individual wellbeing is reciprocally tied to that of the community, making responsibility to self and others mutually and morally binding. (Nussbaum op.cit.: Ewuoso and Hall 2019). The imposition of colonialism disrupts traditional structures and belief-systems of sub-Saharan African life which trade on notions of interdependence and communal welfare.

Ubuntu means humanness—treating other people with kindness, compassion, respect and care (and) is well captured in the Zulu adage which says '*Ubuntu ngomuntu ngabantu*'—a person is a person because of other persons. Hence, failure to act humanely towards other people is thus considered as a lack of humanness or lack of Ubuntu. (Murove and Harris 2014)

That vaccinations were presented in terms of "self-interest" rather than "communal wellbeing" might all by itself account for the mal-adaption of vaccination programs to sub-Saharan African environments.

Akpa-Inyang and Chima (2021), likewise, demonstrate that the Western-European concept of libertarianism, and even notions of a rights-based autonomy which emphasize individual liberties, may conflict with African cultural values and norms. "African communitarian ethics", they write, "focuses on the interests of the collective whole or community, rather than rugged individualism. Hence, collective decision-making processes take precedence over individual autonomy or consent. This apparent conflict may impact informed consent practice during biomedical research in African communities". More precisely, Ndofirepi and Shanyanana (2016) note that

... Values in traditional African communities have persistently been condemned for holding back modernisation ... because, in such collectivistic social arrangements, parents typically promote relatedness and interdependence in their children, stemming from a close relationship with, and strong connection to, the family. This orientation to the larger group encourages values such as respect and obedience. In contrast, parents in individualistic (e.g., Western) cultures generally encourage children to develop into independent, autonomous individuals who have less strong links to the larger groups. In such cultures, the values of personal choice, intrinsic motivation, self-esteem and self-maximisation are stressed.

How does this African body of belief translate into VH/R? Little has been researched in this area (Metz 2018), but the causative chain of beliefs leading to actions or non-actions is clear. In matters of life, the African guided by the philosophy of *Ukama*, the twin virtue of *Ubuntu*, is expected to find answers, knowledge, wisdom, reassurance and validation in the family.

Approaches by strangers promoting unheard-of nostrums for reasons unknown from an alien world are not likely to be very successful. Longstanding beliefs that Western medicines are either unnecessary or harmful, folk-memories of genocidal and racist activity (Grawe 2019), rumors of Western drug companies using Africa as a drug test-bed, or adulterating vaccines with anti-fertility drugs, in a context in which the elders of peoples adhere to the principles of *Ubuntu and Ukama*, are unlikely to promote support for initiatives such as vaccination drives. Conversely, a successful program will emphasize that local leaders prefer to keep to their own people and pay substantive tribute to ancient beliefs that historically have informed their way of life. To an extent, these native values are dismissed today by the successors of Africans' colonial oppressors.
