scholarly journals ‘We see you’ – Sawubona, safe spaces and being human together in South Africa: An ethnographic probe into a fresh expression of church

2019 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian A. Nell ◽  
Ben Aldous
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Safe Spaces ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Epistemic Violence ◽  
History Of ◽  
Democratic Elections

Since the end of apartheid and the advent of democratic elections, South Africa has made great strides, but we still continue, at times, to be unable to practise sawubona. On one level, this is not surprising given our history of separateness. The article asks whether fresh expressions of church, such as the community supper at St Peters in Mowbray, Cape Town, indeed create a space for genuinely ‘seeing’ each other and practicing being human together. The article also explores some of the problems inherent in ethnographic work amongst the poor and the vulnerable by asking whether some types of ethnographic work actually practice a form of epistemic violence and muses upon the idea of the postcolonial gaze and ‘othering’ in ethnography in contexts of poverty in the global South. Can ethnography, in some cases, be a form of academic pornography?

scholarly journals Urban social movements in South Africa today: Its meaning for theological education and the church

2017 ◽  
Vol 73 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan F. De Beer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Movements ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Social Movements ◽  
Gustavo Gutierrez ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

In the past decade, significant social movements emerged in South Africa, in response to specific urban challenges of injustice or exclusion. This article will interrogate the meaning of such urban social movements for theological education and the church. Departing from a firm conviction that such movements are irruptions of the poor, in the way described by Gustavo Gutierrez and others, and that movements of liberation residing with, or in a commitment to, the poor, should be the locus of our theological reflection, this article suggests that there is much to be gained from the praxis of urban social movements, in disrupting, informing and shaping the praxis of both theological education and the church. I will give special consideration to Ndifuna Ukwazi and the Reclaim the City campaign in Cape Town, the Social Justice Coalition in Cape Town, and Abahlali baseMjondolo based in Durban, considering these as some of the most important and exciting examples of liberatory praxes in South Africa today. I argue that theological education and educators, and a church committed to the Jesus who came ‘to liberate the oppressed’, ignore these irruptions of the Spirit at our own peril.

The racialization of animal advocacy in South Africa

Ethnicities ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146879682094676
Author(s):  
Luis Cordeiro-Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Faculty Members ◽  
Black Faculty ◽  
Racial Justice ◽  
Animal Product ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
History Of ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

In 2015, some faculty at the University of Cape Town made a proposal to the Faculty of Humanities that no animal product be served at faculty events. Many black faculty members contested the proposal on the grounds that it was racist and disavowed the importance of the proposal. In this article, I wish to argue that the proposal’s approach neglects the racialized history of animal advocacy in South Africa, while also being carried out at an inopportune time and context. Consequently, it racializes the debate on animal advocacy in South Africa to the extent that it contributes to the African faculty’s disavowal of the proposal and of animal injustice in general. Nevertheless, I also argue that the proposal could have been more successful if it had integrated racial justice concerns and African elements. This is the case because there are good reasons for Africans to support animal justice. Particularly, in the case of South Africa, it can be argued that addressing animal justice is beneficial for improving Africans’ health, a contribution to the elimination of environmental injustice and helpful for Africanizing institutions.

scholarly journals ‘VIPsm’, A Threat to Social Stability in South Africa: From Apartheid Exclusions to Democratized Inequalities

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (13) ◽  
pp. 6-14
Author(s):  
Mashele Rapatsa
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Stability ◽  
Transformational Leaders ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Major Goal ◽  
Social Challenges ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Poor ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact

AbstractThe object of this article is to present a critical analysis of the impact of the notion of ‘VIPsm’, a phenomenon through which human beings are socially ‘categorized’ or ‘classed’ according to status or wealth or position being held in society. The article is predicated on South Africa’s discernible constitutional pursuit of attaining social stability and equitable social justice. This work is also considerate of the country’s known unpleasant history of apartheid’s acute race-based social exclusions, and in contrast, the post 1994 persistent social and economic inequalities which thus far proliferates material disadvantage, poverty, social discontent and protests amongst citizens. The article employed ‘Transformational Leadership theory ‘and ‘Power and Influence theories’ as tools of analysis, given that the Constitution, 1996 is transformative in nature and thus require ‘transformational leaders’ in order to achieve its major goal of burying wounds of the past, to build one unified nation that is socially stable. It is asserted that social challenges and superfluous differential treatment of humans besieging contemporary South Africa are suggestive of the presence of leadership that is self-centered, opulence driven, and has little or no regard for the poor and thus, disfavor the solidarity principle.

scholarly journals Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis-Constant Martin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Rhythmic Pattern ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Musical Styles

For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an ìidentityî which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social --in this case pseudo-racial --identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and 'racial'categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture.

South Africa, philosophy in

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Duvenage
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
African Philosophy ◽  
The South ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
British Idealism

Although it is incorrect to refer to an independent South African philosophical tradition, South Africa is nevertheless the location of an interesting history of philosophical institutionalization. This institutionalization is closely intertwined with the colonial and postcolonial history of Western expansion (Dutch and English) and the reactions it unleashed within the South African context. It is especially interesting to trace the influence and the application of Anglo-American and continental origins in South Africa. Even in contemporary South Africa, philosophers who are working in fields such as postmodernism, postcolonialism, feminism and analytical philosophy do so mostly under the influence of contexts beyond South Africa’s borders. After the early Dutch influence in South Africa (1652–1806) a British colonial educational system emerged during the nineteenth century. From the first institutions of higher education (the South African College in Cape Town, and the University of the Cape of Good Hope) the first tertiary institutions emerged in the early part of the twentieth century at Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and Pretoria. Although other universities were subsequently instituted, these four can be considered the four founding residential universities in South Africa. It is also at these universities (and at Colleges in Grahamstown, Bloemfontein, Durban and Pietermaritzburg) that British idealism had a major influence on the early stages of South African philosophy (1873–1940). Against this background figures such as Fremantle (Cape Town), Walker (Stellenbosch), Hoernlé (Johannesburg), Lord (Grahamstown) and Macfadyen (Pretoria) were instrumental. From the 1930s the hegemony of British idealism was challenged by analytical philosophy (mainly at English-speaking South African universities) and continental traditions (mainly at Afrikaans-speaking universities). Since the political transformation of South Africa (1994) African philosophy has also emerged as a major philosophical tradition. The challenge for philosophy in contemporary South Africa is to explore those intellectual traditions that have shaped philosophy in South Africa, to know where they are coming from and to understand how they were transformed under (post)colonial conditions. Such a (genealogical) perspective provides a historical and material corrective to arguments that might otherwise strive to reconcile cultural values and ideas in an apolitical and ahistorical manner.

Black Man’s Burden, White Man’s Liquor in Southern Africa

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-193
Author(s):  
Mark Lawrence Schrad
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
White Liquor ◽  
Queen Victoria ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colonial Office

Chapter 6 examines the history of Britain’s colonization of South Africa as a clash between imperialists like Cecil Rhodes—who wielded liquor as a tool to get indigenous leaders drunk and sign away rights to their land—and native African tribal leaders. Rhodes’s greatest obstacle in his planned Cape Town–to-Cairo railroad were the prohibitionist leaders of Bechuanaland (present-day Botswana)—King Khama, Sebele I, and Bathoen—who in 1895 went so far as to travel to England to plead to Queen Victoria and the Colonial Office to maintain their sovereignty against white incursions and their prohibition against white liquor. Harnessing British temperance networks and building goodwill, the Bechuana kings emerged victorious: Bechuanaland would remain a protectorate, but not folded into Britain’s Cape Colony, foiling Rhodes’s machinations.

scholarly journals Fragment urbanism: Politics at the margins of the city

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1007-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Urban Sanitation ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The City

Fragmentation is a keyword in the history of critical urban thought. Yet the products of fragmentation – the fragments themselves – tend to receive less attention. In this paper, I develop a politics of urban fragments as a contribution to debates both in urban theory and in urban poverty and inequality. I examine inadequate and broken material fragments on the economic margins of the urban global South, and ask how they become differently politicized in cities. I develop a three-fold framework for understanding the politics of fragments: attending to, generative translation and surveying wholes. I build these arguments through a focus on a fundamental provision – urban sanitation – drawing on research in Mumbai in particular, as well as Cape Town, and connecting those instances to research on urban poverty, politics and fragmentation.

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