Community Participation in the Monitoring of Public Policies in Panda District in Light of Ubuntu Philosophy

This article examines community participation in the monitoring of public policies in Panda District, taking Ubuntu philosophy as an ethical and cultural reference. The general objective is to analyze community participation in policy monitoring through the lens of Ubuntu. The central problem that motivated this study lies in the gap between legal provisions and lived reality: limited citizen presence in policy processes, perceptions of partiality, and weak trust in institutions. A mixed methodology was adopted, including questionnaires administered to officials and 50 beneficiaries, semi- structured interviews, and direct observation, which enabled the capture of perceptions, behaviors, and decision-making routines. The findings reveal a lack of knowledge of the code of ethics, disrespectful treatment of citizens, decision-making centralization, and signs of nhonguismo (favoritism based on kinship or personal ties), which together form a cycle of exclusion that undermines monitoring. The study concludes that Ubuntu offers a practical framework to restore social bonds and revitalize participation, while recognizing that such transformation requires stable institutional routines. It is therefore recommended to promote continuous dissemination of institutional ethics, to reactivate local councils as deliberative spaces, to establish accountability calendars with public feedback, and to implement pilot projects in neighborhoods that adopt dialogue circles, shared leadership, and the inclusion of women and youth, accompanied by simple metrics of trust, transparency, and satisfaction with public services.