Reimagining ubuntu and human solidarity in decoloniality: A missional reading of Luke 10:25–37 in the context of woundedness, inequality, and homelessness in the City of Tshwane

Abstract

Three decades after the dawn of the democratic dispensation, South Africa’s urban spaces continue to bear the brunt of the aftermath of colonial and apartheid past, that is, racialised exclusion, socio-economic inequality, and homelessness. These conditions have left many wounded and vulnerable, and some also left to die, as in the case of Luke 10:25–37. In the City of Tshwane, these realities continue to manifest through unemployed and homeless people who live under bridges, along riverbanks, in parks, and some have to find refuge in established shelters or homes. This article seeks to address the question: How can a missional reading of Luke 10:25–37 reimagine ubuntu and human solidarity in the context of homelessness in Tshwane? Having conducted a Contextual Bible Study with approximately 25 homeless participants in the City of Tshwane, this article advances an argument that a decolonial missional reading of Luke 10:25–37 reinterprets ubuntu as an essential praxis that restores dignity through embodied solidarity and spatial, social, economic, and epistemic justice in urban contexts.
Contribution: Through embodied solidarity, this article proposes a missional-decolonial praxis that empowers the agency of a church to be transformative, that is, to achieve spatial, social, economic, and epistemic justice for wounded, vulnerable, and homeless people in the City of Tshwane. This is meant to address both structural exclusion and lived experiences of marginalisation.