Ubuntu is a Nguni Bantu term that roughly translates to "humanity". It is a humanitarian concept, a philosophy, from the Southern African region which means literally "human-ness", and is often translated as "humanity towards others", but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity".
In Southern Africa, it has come to be used as a term for a kind of humanist philosophy, ethic, or ideology, also known as Ubuntu-ism or Hunhuism (the latter after the corresponding Shona term) propagated in the Africanisation (transition to majority rule) process of these countries during the 1980s and 1990s.
Since the transition to democracy in South Africa with the Nelson Mandela presidency in 1994, the term has become more widely known outside of Southern Africa, notably popularised to English language readers by Desmond Tutu (1999).
