Ubuntu Relational Love: Decolonizing Black Masculinities

by Devi Dee Mucina

Ubuntu is a Bantu term meaning humanity. It is also a philosophical and ethical system of thought, from which definitions of humanness, togetherness, and social politics of difference arise. Devi Dee Mucina is a Black Indigenous Ubuntu man. In Ubuntu Relational Love, he uses Ubuntu oratures as tools to address the impacts of Euro-colonialism while regenerating relational Ubuntu governance structures. Called “millet granaries” to reflect the nourishing and sustaining nature of Indigenous knowledges, and written as letters addressed to his mother, father, and children, Mucina’s oratures take up questions of geopolitics, social justice, and resistance. Working through personal and historical legacies of dispossession and oppression, he challenges the fragmentation of Indigenous families and cultures and decolonizes impositions of white supremacy and masculinity. Drawing on anti-racist, African feminist, and Ubuntu theories and critically influenced by Indigenous masculinities scholarship in Canada, Ubuntu Relational Love is a powerful and engaging book.

240 pages, Paperback

Published October 18, 2019

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite book I’ve read in 2025, and I’ve spent the past few days even reviewing my notes and gathering my thoughts on this piece. Across the book, Mucina reminds us that spirituality, particularly Ubuntu and relational love, is political. Our diverse cultural knowledges and how we see and understand the world and others around us is political. Mucina calls to us to remember our Indigenous and traditional oratures not only to understand ourselves, our history and our familial relations better, but because “how can we be happy in the boundaries of colonialism that has led us to abandon each other?” And so, Mucina sets out on a journey to examine his life, his oratures, to seek understanding of his family through Ubuntu relational practices.

I felt so touched, not only by the sincerity and authenticity of this book, but by the need to reconnect with my own ancestral roots. Some key messages that stuck with me, in no particular order:

1. We live in such a highly connected, globalized world, yet we have never been so disconnected from one another and individualism is thriving — because it is crucial for capitalism and consumerism to thrive, and our social relations, our curiosity in one another and our ability to act collectively for the good of our societies is in decline.

2. Being comfortable with living with difference is becoming more and more crucial. And this not only means accepting that others are different from you, but engaging with their differences and asking questions from a point of respectful curiousity to deepen our care of one another and belonging.

3. Reconciliation is not enough, when we think about the irreparable damages that colonization has meant for Indigenous peoples, and it will never be enough if it is not paired with restitution. This means giving land back, honoring Indigenous sacred traditions, relations to land, languages and ways of knowing.

4. How colonization is thingification - how Black and Indigenous peoples, and now peoples of color (and our ways of knowing and being)’s value are reduced to our proximity to whiteness and how this, consequently, has resulted in othering our traditions, knowledges and practices to engage and participate in white supremacy.

To engage in Ubuntu, in relational love, we need to centre and honor our diverse ways of being so that we can see each other. No one is coming to save us, but we can be our own heroes by standing up for one another.

I cannot recommend this enough as an introduction do Ubuntu and decolonial love.

[Meretini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recommended this book to a friend as I liked the synopsis and so decided to give it a read too. Similarities to my own indigenous lens of the world and was good to get another perspective outside of the Pacific Ocean experience. I had never really thought about the word love being used for more than human concepts so was really curious to understand the placement of love in relational. I am currently exploring a literature review heavily centred on indigenous knowledge systems and this book gave great reference points and just help me to explore the South African landscape past apartheid and from a strength base of indigenous knowledge.

[Amani Chabikuli · Rating 5 out of 5]

deeply inspiring and emotional

our oratures are so important 🪷