Examining Ubuntu Ethics in Press Coverage of Environmental Justice Cases Involving Indigenous Communities in Africa

This paper examines news coverage of environmental legal challenges staged by Indigenous communities in Africa. We specifically focus on the Ogiek in Kenya and the Batwa in Uganda who successfully challenged oppressive government evictions in court, and the Xolobeni of South Africa who won a landmark case preventing an Australian company from building a titanium mine on its ancestral lands. We apply Ubuntu, a decolonial framework for ethical decision making, to analyze newspapers (N = 82) in Kenya (Daily Nation, The Star, The East African), Uganda (Daily Monitor, The Observer, and New Vision), and South Africa (Business Day, The Star, Sunday Times and Mail & Guardian). Findings indicate news organizations sometimes applied ethical tenets rooted in Ubuntuism by affirming Indigenous communities’ experiences of marginality and exposing violence enacted by governments and corporations. However, in some instances reportage perpetuated racist and colonialist tropes, and excluded diverse voices and perspectives of Indigenous peoples.