Opinion – “I am because we are”… Humanising Angolan immigrants through Ubuntu

Imagine a photo: an Angolan mother, barefoot in Namibia, holding a hungry child. Instead of indifference, someone hands her shoes and food. This isn’t politics; it’s Ubuntu in action. Namibia, founded on the generosity of neighbours like Angola, now faces a choice. How we treat the vulnerable reveals who we are, and neglecting them betrays our history and humanity.

Facing hard truths about

** immigration**

Illegal immigration is a real challenge. Namibia has laws and limited resources, and the government must manage its borders. But opposing illegal immigration is not the same as dehumanising people. When media and public figures reduce Angolan immigrants to labels and ignore their mistreatment, we add moral failure to policy failure. Ubuntu demands we do better.

Ubuntu: An Ethical Imperative

“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”: A person is a person through others.

Ubuntu is not just a slogan; it’s a serious ethical framework. My humanity is tied to yours. If the vulnerable go shoeless or hungry while others ignore them, the community is not whole. Ubuntu doesn’t deny borders or challenges, but insists we never let law erase morality. Immigration status is legal, not human. This principle is African, and it is ours.

The dangers of othering

“Othering” is when a group treats outsiders as fundamentally different or less than, justifying exclusion or harm. It’s as old as tribalism and as current as online comments about immigrants.

In Namibia, Angolan immigrants are often reduced to a “problem” or a “burden.” Women and children become invisible to welfare and justice systems, exposed to exploitation and abuse, and are treated as if they don’t fully count as human.

Dehumanisation happens through language, media, and politics that scapegoat immigrants. Once people are “othered,” empathy fails, and cruelty follows. This is against Ubuntu and the lessons of our own history.

Our proposal and its purpose

This project operates on three fronts, each crucial.First, advocacy: We use media to challenge harmful narratives and encourage Ubuntu, asking people to address immigration concerns with conscience.

Second, goodwill: Providing food and shoes restores dignity for those made invisible. Simple acts of kindness remind recipients and donors alike of our shared humanity. For many, these basics are survival, not luxury.

Third, rights awareness: Many immigrant women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitation due to lack of documentation, language barriers, and ignorance of their rights. We aim to educate and empower them. Namibia’s laws protect everyone. By sharing information about legal rights in accessible ways, we help extend justice to those left out. This is justice, not charity.

A word to the sceptics

We anticipate objections. We welcome them.

“Why help people who came here illegally?” Because Namibia is a constitutional Republic whose Bill of Rights protects human dignity irrespective of nationality or immigration status. Article 8 of the Namibian Constitution is unambiguous: every person’s dignity is inviolable. Not every citizen’s dignity. Every person’s. Won’t this encourage more illegal immigration?”

The empirical evidence on this question is settled and clear: humanitarian assistance to migrants at their destination does not meaningfully increase migration flows.

People do not leave their homes and cross borders because someone at the end of the journey might give them a bag of food. They leave because of violence, poverty, family breakdown, and desperation. Addressing their needs upon arrival is not an immigration policy. It is a humanitarian one.

“Our own people are suffering. Why not focus on them?” This false binary, help immigrants or help citizens, does not reflect reality. Compassion is not a finite resource that depletes when shared beyond one’s immediate community. Ubuntu is not tribalism dressed in philosophical clothes. It is the recognition that the suffering of any human being diminishes us all. A society that builds its identity on who it excludes will always find new groups to exclude, including, eventually, its own.

What Namibia can be

Namibia has a particular responsibility in this conversation, and a particular opportunity. Ours is a country that achieved independence in 1990 after decades of a liberation struggle that was sustained in part by the solidarity of African neighbours, Angola among them. Namibian freedom fighters trained in Angola. Namibian refugees found shelter in Zambia, Botswana, and Tanzania. The international community, African and otherwise, extended its hand to a people fighting for their right to exist on their own terms.

We remember. And because we remember, we cannot pretend that solidarity is a virtue we only believed in when we needed it. The project proposed in this concept note is not asking Namibia to solve the structural problems of regional migration.

It is not asking for open borders or for the abandonment of immigration enforcement. It is asking something far simpler and far more profound: that we look at the human beings in our midst, however they arrived, and choose not to look away. It is asking us to choose Ubuntu over othering. Dignity over dismissal. Action over apathy.

A call to Namibians

To every Namibian reading this: your participation in this project costs you nothing but a little of your time and, if you choose to donate, a little of your resources. Please reach out to the contact person via email below. The return to those you help, to your community, and to your own conscience is immeasurable. To every media house in this country: you have a responsibility that goes beyond reporting. You have the power to frame. Frame these human beings with care. Use their names.

Tell their stories. The next time you publish a piece about illegal Angolan immigrants, ask yourself whether you would be comfortable if the person reading it were the subject of the story. To every policymaker and official: the law is not self-executing.

Enforcement without empathy creates a system that is legally compliant and morally bankrupt. There is room, and there is an obligation to do both: enforce the law and uphold human dignity. These are not in conflict unless we choose to make them so.

And to the Angolan immigrant women, men, and children who may somehow read these words: you are seen. You are human. And there are Namibians who know that umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu– that our humanity is not diminished by yours but completed by it.

Ubuntu as praxis, not just philosophy

Ubuntu is a philosophy that demands praxis it must be lived, not merely invoked. The project described in this concept note is an act of praxis.

It takes an ancient African value and makes it concrete: in the form of an opinion piece that challenges dehumanising discourse; in the form of food and shoes handed to people rendered invisible; in the form of legal knowledge given to women who did not know they had rights worth knowing.

It is a small project, in the grand scheme of things. But it is the right project. At the right time. In the right place.

We are because they are, too; If they are not, then we most definitely aren’t either.

***This opinion piece was produced as part of the “Humanising the Other: Empowering Illegal Angolan Immigrants through Ubuntu” Community Impact Project. ***

*Dr Ndinohokwe Mukerenge and Uua Tjazapi are University of Namibia law students.

Contact: fshikonga@yahoo.com

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