Ubuntu 2.0

We have a saying in these parts:

umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu
a person is a person through other people

– kind of the opposite to each one for himself. With this sort of profound philosophy in our culture, how have we allowed a culture of personal gain to take root so firmly throughout society? Why has Africa as a whole gone so badly wrong if this is a core belief – and I have no reason to believe it is not?

What I have observed in seeing this belief in action is that many interpret it narrowly – that the “other people” are “their own”, narrowly interpreted tribally or even to close friends and family. Thus, for example, someone assumes the presidency of a country and immediately everyone close to them puts their nose to the trough – our turn to eat, a phrase originating out of corruption in Kenya.

What is missing is a greater sense of nationality, that this concept does not just apply to your own, but to everyone in the greater community.

This omission is particularly obscured by the myth of Pan-Africanism, the notion that Africa is a sociopolitical whole embracing Ubuntu, as the concept is more widely known (with fewer hard syllables for foreigners). Yet the reality is far different – tribalism persists, we have wars, civil wars, ethnic cleansing and xenophobia.

Another problem is that the colonial and apartheid systems co-opted traditional leaders into a police-state system of governance. Any democratic tendencies that may have existed in pre-colonial times were subverted to a system of total obedience to authority.

What is to be done?

We need to go back to traditional values and re-conceptualize them as applying to a modern democratic order.

Ubuntu in this new order means the opposite to everyone for himself (or herself). But it also does not mean look after your own. It means pursue your life goals by pursuing the greater good.

Tied into this is escaping the mindset of cowed citizens of a police state. Sadly, when colonial and apartheid powers retreated, it was all to easy for liberators to keep their subjects in a subservient state. After all, their leaders are now in charge, so what is there to fight for? But that is a very shallow definition of what a leader is, and derives from the subversion of traditional leadership by colonialism and apartheid.

A leader should be respected by virtue of earning respect, not simply virtue of the office they hold. A leader should represent the will of the people, allowing some latitude for a genuine leader to move ahead of the people on occasion, but ultimately to bring them along to the new position. In a democracy, a leader who loses respect and credibility can and should be voted out of office.

None of this contradicts traditional African values; rather the notion of Ubuntu modernized to a democratic order is a uniquely African contribution to human society, and a project worth pursuing. Failure to adapt the concept of leadership to a democratic order on the hand entrenches colonial and apartheid power relations, and leaves the ordinary citizen unable to benefit from liberation beyond the symbolism of changing the complexion of those in power.

Tablet Wars

No, not anything to do with the war on drugs.

One thing Apple does well is secret. The 23 October iPad mini launch was widely leaked, though the originally rumoured date earlier in October passed uneventfully. What did take everyone by surprise was a major overhaul of the full-sized iPad. There had been some rumours of an iMac update; I don’t recall seeing any rumours of a Mac mini update.

All of this of course was designed to upstage the Windows 8 and Microsoft Surface launch scheduled for 26 October.

It remains to be seen whether people really want something closer to a full computer in this form factor. Once you add a mouse or trackpad, you can’t hold it in your hand any more, and stylus-based devices have been around more than 10 years and never sold in big numbers. The kick stand is not a great design feature, because it implies the need for a firm surface, reducing again the scenarios when you can use it comfortably. Currently this space is owned by Apple and Android variants (Kindle Fire, Samsung) and Microsoft does not have the app base to take them on. If you are going to buy one of these as a notebook alternative, why not get a notebook?

I bought an iPad mainly because it gave me the option to take something much lighter to a conference, where I need to read email and give a presentation. When I have that option, it works pretty well for me. If I need a real computer, I bring that instead, so I don’t need to compromise on issues like keyboard quality and a poor alternative to a mouse or track pad.

It will be great if Microsoft can bring new competition to this space, but I have my doubts (and an early review is not too promising). An important thing to understand what business a company is really in. Although most people focus on Apple’s hardware and the question of what value it really represents, Apple’s real competitive edge is in a huge bank of credit card numbers. If they wanted to switch their business model tomorrow to slim margins on hardware and making most of their money from their app and iTunes stores, they could. Microsoft on the other hand has built a business out of high-margin software. How can they turn that around overnight?

Check this out: current total app count in Windows 8 RTM Store = 4,284 (mostly free); compare with iOS total available apps: 694,566 and current number of Android apps in the market: 548,200.

The real big killer number is Apple has (at last count I’ve found) 435-million credit card numbers. Only Amazon is in likely to be in this league: a much higher fraction of of Android customers only download free stuff.

As for the new Windows look of huge fat, flat icons, if it works as badly as the Ubuntu Unity interface (some say worse), meh.

Back to Apple’s announcements: I’ll hold off judgment on whether the iPad mini is too expensive for the market (vs. more expensive than I’d like it to be). The overhaul of the bigger iPad is unexpected, and an indication that Apple is not willing to let Microsoft steal any territory back from them. The Surface RT (ARM processor, not able to run most Windows software) is the target. The Surface Pro will have to take its chances selling against Ultrabooks that are a little heavier and work better as a full computer. The ultra-thin iMac is an engineering marvel; my 2009 27" iMac has just had to go in for repairs because of a recall on its 1TB drive; had Apple designed it to be easy to repair as well as to look good, they could have couriered the drive to me rather than requiring that I send the whole machine in to repair.

Looking great is important, but if you end up with a Lamborghini that needs a specialist technician with special tools to service, even if it only costs as much to buy as a BMW, you have a practicality problem. So I am genuinely disappointed that no one is seriously competitive with Apple in the things it does best: providing a seamless end-to-end experience centred on the user.

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This article lists Microsoft's lessons from the Zune fiasco. Did they learn? I have my doubts. Microsoft's development model, cemented by the success of Windows 95 at a time when Apple was floundering, is to get at least two iterations wrong: design refinement on the back of customers. With Apple on top form, I'm not placing any bets on the once good old strategy.