Zulu proverb from Chris Handley

[Logical Language Group <cbmvax!uunet!pucc.princeton.edu!lojbab>]

Chris Handley sent me the following:
>BTW, my wife was sent a press clipping about the first black head girl
>of a "white" school in SA.  She used a Zulu proverb to describe her
>perceptions of her position
>
>    "Umuntu ugumuntu ngabantu"
>        => A person is a person because of people.
>
>'umu' is the archetypical singular prefix, 'aba' ditto plural.
>
>I know lojban is reasonably wordy, because of its precision, but you
>might care to try and translate that and put it out to the net.

My problem in translating this is that it is so vague that I don't know
what it means in English.  I would also preder to know the meaning of the
prefixes ug- and ng- on words 2 and 3 respectively.

What does 'archetypal' mean?  Does it stereotype, or is this just the
Bantu categorizer.  What kind of causality does the 'because' suggest?
What about 'people' causes a person to be a person?  Their existence?
Their assistance?  The Zulu may not say, and you may need the cultural
knowledge to know what the proverb is claiming.

Lojban CAN match the vagueness and style, and come pretty close in brevity.
But it means no more to me than the English:

ro prenu cu prenu seja'e tu'a loi prenu
Each person is a person as-a-result-of People.

lojbab