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During our first week here in South Africa we spent time with three remarkable women whose work offers a strong example of how Ubuntu is lived in this part of the world.

Rosie and Baphumelele
On the outskirts of Capetown, near the international airport, lies the vast township of Khayelitsha, home to over one million people. It is here that Rosie Mashele lives and works, running Baphumelele children's home, a place of safety for abandoned, abused, neglected or orphaned children, most of whom are infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS. Rosie's story of how she started doing this work is truly inspiring and illustrates how Ubuntu is practiced in what is a very harsh and poor environment. When Rosie, a trained primary school teacher, first moved to Khayelitsha in 1989, she quickly noticed how many children in the community were scavenging the garbage dump next to her shack for food. She responded to this by inviting the children into her small home where she took care of them during the day while the children's parents were away, either at work or searching for work. After the first week, 36 children had joined her care, and before long she quickly outgrew her small shack. Soon after this, young children and newborn babies began appearing on Rosie's doorstep in the night, abandoned by their mothers or families. Although Rosie was now overwhelmed with the daycare center she was running, and caring for and feeding her own children, she had no choice but to take them in and provide them with a home. Rosie explained that no matter what one's personal situation might be, if you live Ubuntu, which she translated as "love and humanity," you have to help those around you that are in need - it is your duty. "Ubuntu is just a way of life," explained Rosie, "You must open your heart and see the need around you, and then just do what you can do to serve that need." Baphumelele now houses and cares for over 200 children, offers a soup kitchen that is open to anyone, and continues to take in abandoned and abused children in need of help and safety.

Mama Lumka
It took about five seconds to realize that Mama Lumka was all heart; it was unmistakable, radiating from her and her smile. Also known as the "wheelbarrow saint," Mama Lumka lives in Nomzamo, another of the many townships in the Capetown area where small, tin shacks and cinder block buildings stretch for miles upon miles. Here Mama Lumka cares for disabled children, who, like the children Rosie cares for, are often infected or affected by HIV/AIDS. Upon moving to Nomzamo Mama Lumka, whose severely disabled son had recently died, was shocked to see that many of the other disabled children in the area were left alone, locked up in their shacks all day with no care or food, often being abused and repeatedly raped. Compelled to do something, she began collecting these children in a wheelbarrow, bringing them back to her home where she would care for them during the day. For many years, she would be seen every morning and evening in the streets pushing a wheelbarrow filled with young children who were unable to walk, collecting and dropping them off in their homes. Before long she began adopting many of these children as her own and was able to raise enough funds to open first a small daycare center and then a larger home that now houses more than 50 disabled children. Walking through the streets of Nomzamo, Mama Lumka told us her story: how her experience of her son's death opened her heart to caring for others in a way she could never have imagined before; andhow through her tremendous suffering and loss she realized she could be a mama to others who needed one. When we asked her about Ubuntu and the role it plays in her life, she laughed and said, "Here in Africa, Ubuntu just is. You live it. You give and you share with your neighbor, or anyone who asks for or needs help."

Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge
Far from the homes of Rosie and Mama Lumka, in a small, bare office in the capital's parliament building, we met and interviewed MP Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge . Until August of last year, Nozizwe served as Deputy Minister of Health, but then was dismissed by President Mbeki for her strong disagreement with the government's policies and work with the HIV/AIDS crisis in South Africa. Nozizwe is quite a woman, and I think this was one of the most powerful interviews to date for this project. She was extremely humble and spoke with such strength and commitment about resolving conflicts through peaceful action and how working with the principles of oneness and Ubuntu offered a new way forward for dealing with conflicts and the crisis with HIV/AIDS. She also spoke about the common values people across religious faiths share and the need for people in positions of power to work with these common values in order to heal the rifts and separation between people, both here in South Africa and around the world. "Ubuntu is not just for Africans," she said: "it is inside every single human being and has the capacity to bring tremendous change if people can live it." She stressed that we must not forget traditional values and beliefs like Ubuntu in our modern world, but integrate them into how we can work and live in this modern culture, as these are needed now more than ever.

Tomorrow we drive 1200 km north to the small town of Kuruman near the border of Namibia, where we will spend a few days with Credo Mutwa, the famous and controversial Zulu Sangoma.

Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee