Social Social Media and the Moral Development of Adolescent Pupils: Soulmates or Antagonists?

Since the turn of the new millennium Zimbabwe has experienced extensive expansion of Internet access through desktop computers, laptops and cell phones. These gadgets have led to the phenomenal rise in the use of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp, and Skype as e-learning resources. Undergirded by situational analysis, Kohlberg’s theory of moral development and unhu/ubuntu moral philosophy, this article interrogates the impact of this rapid growth of social media networks, as e-learning resources, on the moral development of adolescent pupils in Harare (Zimbabwe). Data were gathered through document analysis, interviews and focus group discussions with adolescent pupils, students, teachers and parents. The study established that pupils’ interaction with social media platforms is largely detrimental to their moral development. Given that the abuse of Internet by adolescents and other social groups who interact with them is a serious matter that inhibits moral development of pupils, this article calls for unhu/ubuntu based cyber interactions, as well as, the enactment of cyber smart legal frameworks which protect adolescents. The article also advocates a curriculum that balances technology with moral education

Animal rights and environmental ethics in Africa : From anthropocentrism to non-speciesism?

The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that African cultures do not objectify and exploit nature and natural organisms, unlike Western (or Northern) moral attitudes and practices. Through exploration of what kind of moral status is reserved for other-than-human animals in African ethics, I argued in my recent book Animals and African Ethics that moral perceptions, attitudes and practices on the African continent have tended to be resolutely anthropocentric, or human-centred. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) and ukama (relationality) have, in recent years, been expanded to include non-human nature, animals characteristically have no rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively ‘indirect‘. Taking into account the brutal and dehumanizing ravages of colonialism, racism and political, cultural and moral apartheid that Africans have historically been subjected to, it does not seem to be wholly off the mark to invite people in sub-Sahara Africa, especially, to reflect on an even longer, more deeply-entrenched historical process of discrimination, oppression and exploitation, namely that of species apartheid. Yet, adoption of a more enlightened stance vis-à-vis the non-human world and animals in particular would almost certainly involve giving up the moral anthropocentrism that characterizes many attitudes and practices on the African continent. This need not entail surrendering what is arguably at the core of sub-Saharan morality – the emphasis on community and harmonious communal relationships. ‘I am because we are’ could reasonably be interpreted as not being confined to the human realm, as transcending the species barrier. I have in mind here something like a relational approach to animal rights and environmental ethics that is neither anthropocentric nor speciesist. The multifarious historical and geographical relationships we have with other-than-human animals give rise to a multitude of moral obligations that differ according to the kinds of relationships we find ourselves in. There is an increasing awareness among African scholars of the untenability of a rigidly species-governed ‘us-against-them’ thinking, that anthropocentrism shares many relevant features with ethnocentrism, and that speciesism is relevantly like racism. It is my aim in the proposed contribution to explore these ideas and conceptual tools in more detail

Ubuntu diplomacy: Broadening soft power in an African context

Ubuntu is an African philosophical worldview that has increasingly gained prominence since South Africa's democratic transition in 1994. It places emphasis on the world's common humanity and its consequent interdependence. Through content analysis, the article examines the soft power that is inherent in South Africa's foreign policy, as codified in the 2011 White Paper on South African Foreign Policy–Building a Better World: Diplomacy of Ubuntu. In its findings, the article established a distinction between Joseph Nye's original conceptualization of soft power, formulated from a United States realist foreign policy perspective, and the one inherent in South Africa's humanist foreign policy guided by the philosophy of Ubuntu. This distinction is premised on the geopolitical disparities between the two nations. The article further examines South Africa's wielding of soft power within the African continent, the first audience of the country's diplomacy of Ubuntu.https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/147918542021-03-04am2020Political Science