scholarly journals The idolatry of white supremacy in church and society? Some reflections on Black Theology of Liberation in present-day South Africa in memoriam of Vuyani Vellem

2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rothney S. Tshaka
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Church And Society ◽  
History Of ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Scholarly Contribution ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

In remembering Vuyani Vellem, this paper delves into his scholarship, a scholarship that admittedly exudes his activism in academia, church and society. Choosing intentionally the marginalised as the primary interlocutors in discourse, Vellem demonstrates that he is situated in the arena of those who are otherwise seen as the wretched of the earth, insisting that Black Theology of Liberation must engage in a praxis that centres the lived experiences of black people and creates for itself legacies that would attest to Black Theology of Liberation as a formidable hermeneutic that recognises the sanctity of black life in a context of the prevalence of white supremacy. It notes however that a history of colonisation and subjugation has wrecked the humanity of black people, and as a result, a contract with black people becomes essential on this path towards the total emancipation of black people in South Africa and the world.Contribution: The scholarly contribution of this article is its focus on the systematic and practical reflection, within a paradigm in which the intersection of religious studies, social sciences and humanities generate an interdisciplinary contested discourse.

scholarly journals Ubuntu as a spirituality of liberation for black theology of liberation

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandiswa L. Kobe
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
Indigenous Philosophy ◽  
African Spirituality ◽  
Practical Reflection ◽  
Scholarly Contribution ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

This article aims to respond to Vuyani Vellem’s challenge to black theology of liberation (BTL) to ‘think beyond rethinking and repeating its tried and tested ways of responding to black pain caused by racism and colonialism’. Vellem argued that ‘BTL needs to unthink the west by focusing on and retaining African spirituality as a cognitive spirituality’ for the liberation of black people in South Africa. This article argues that Ubuntu is the spirituality of liberation that BTL needs to advance as one of its interlocutors. This research work will consult the literature emerging from African philosophy, ethics, spirituality and BTL arguing that Ubuntu is an indigenous philosophy, spirituality that continues to exist in the languages and culture of the Abantu (Bantu) speaking people. This article is dedicated to the memory of Vellem as a BTL scholar and a faithful believer of the liberative paradigms of BTL.Contribution: The scholarly contribution of this article is its focus on the systematic and practical reflection, within a paradigm in which the intersection of religious studies, social sciences and humanities generate an interdisciplinary contested discourse.

The Black Lives Matter movement: A call to action: Acts 10:11–16, 25–28, 34–35

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (3) ◽  
pp. 347-356 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Alfred Smith
Keyword(s):  
Police Officers ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Black Life ◽  
Black Christians ◽  
American Society ◽  
Justice Movements

The Black Lives Matter movement is one of the most dynamic social justice movements currently emerging in the USA. This movement led by young Blacks unapologetically calls out the shameful, historical legacy of American racism and White supremacy while asserting the humanity and sacredness of Black lives, particularly those of unarmed persons senselessly murdered by police officers. While Black Lives Matter is a new movement, it is also an extension of the 400-year struggle of Black people in America to affirm Black dignity, equality, and human rights, even while the major institutions of American society have propagated doctrines and enforced unjust rules/laws to denigrate Black life. Black Christians have found hope and inspiration from the Gospel to claim their humanity and to struggle to gain justice for Black lives and for the lives of all oppressed people. In addition, the Black Lives Matter movement provides a helpful critique of many Black churches, challenging them to confront their biases, which label young Black males as “thugs” (the new N-word) and which cruelly demonize the LGBTQ community. The story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 provides a scriptural basis for Christian introspection and responses to God’s vision for beloved community, and for the call to action from the Black Lives Matter movement.

scholarly journals The colonial matrix of power: Image ontology and the question of blackness

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Itumeleng D. Mothoagae
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
Black People ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global South ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

The question of blackness has always featured the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and class. Blackness as an ontological speciality has been engaged from both the social and epistemic locations of the damnés (in Fanonian terms). It has thus sought to respond to the performance of power within the world order that is structured within the colonial matrix of power, which has ontologically, epistemologically, spatially and existentially rendered blackness accessible to whiteness, while whiteness remains inaccessible to blackness. The article locates the question of blackness from the perspective of the Global South in the context of South Africa. Though there are elements of progress in terms of the conditions of certain Black people, it would be short-sighted to argue that such conditions in themselves indicate that the struggles of blackness are over. The essay seeks to address a critique by Anderson (1995) against Black theology in the context of the United States of America (US). The argument is that the question of blackness cannot and should not be provincialised. To understand how the colonial matrix of power is performed, it should start with the local and be linked with the global to engage critically the colonial matrix of power that is performed within a system of coloniality. Decoloniality is employed in this article as an analytical tool.Contribution: The article contributes to the discourse on blackness within Black theology scholarship. It aims to contribute to the continual debates on the excavating and levelling of the epistemological voices that have been suppressed through colonial epistemological universalisation of knowledge from the perspective of the damnés.

Black Life, Trans Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-171
Author(s):  
SA Smythe
Keyword(s):  
Black People ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The West ◽  
Trans People ◽  
Vulnerable People ◽  
Trans Studies ◽  
Black Life

Abstract This essay thinks through some possibilities and implications for a trans studies formation in Europe and across the West that takes as some of its core concerns and ethical commitments black people, black life, and black capacities for insurgency, experimentation, and trans nonbinary method. Writing against the logics of displacement, disciplinarity, and depletion, what follows is a brief meditation on both the institutionalization of trans studies in Western academia and the material disregard of black people, trans people, migrants, and other oppressed and vulnerable people under the extractive regimes of cisheteropatriarchial white supremacy.

History of Photography in Apartheid South Africa

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kylie Thomas
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Political Violence ◽  
Black People ◽  
History Of Photography ◽  
Resistance Movements ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Time Period ◽  
History Of ◽  
Visual Record

The beginning of apartheid in 1948 saw the emergence of a generation of photographers whose work would come to define South African photography for the next four decades. Many of the most well-known South African photographers, such as Ernest Cole, Bob Gosani Peter Magubane, and Jürgen Schadeberg, worked for Drum magazine in the 1950s, where their images conveyed the experiences of Black people living in cities in the first years of apartheid. Photographers chronicled the Defiance Campaign, the violence of the police, and the growing resistance movements. At the same time, they took portraits and images of everyday life that provide insight into what it was like to live under apartheid. These kinds of images have increasingly been of interest to researchers and curators who have come to recognize the importance of vernacular photography, street photography, and the work of studio portrait photographers. The Sharpeville Massacre of 1960 marked a turning point in the country’s history and was followed by intensified repression and violence, the banning of opposition political parties, the jailing of political leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe, and mass forced removals as neighborhoods were declared “whites only” areas. The Soweto uprisings in June 1976 and the protests that followed across South Africa signaled the beginning of a time of increased violence as the apartheid state sought to crush the resistance movements and thousands of protestors were detained without trial, interrogated, and tortured and several political activists were murdered by the security police. By the 1980s, photography had a clear place in the struggle for freedom in the country and many photographers perceived the camera as a weapon to be used against the state. In 1982, the Afrapix collective was formed by a group of photographers committed to opposing apartheid who went on to produce the most significant visual record of this time. The years immediately before the end of apartheid saw an increase in political violence and between 1990 and 1994 more than 10, 000 people were killed. Photographers who documented this time drew the world’s attention to the bitter struggle in the country. They went on to photograph the jubilation when Mandela was finally released from prison and the first free and fair elections when South Africans of all races were able to vote. Some of the most brilliant photographers of the last century documented the apartheid years, and their work plays a key role in how this time period is remembered and understood.

scholarly journals Unshackling the Church

2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vuyani Vellem
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Crucial Role ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Black Africans ◽  
Colonial Legacy ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
History Of ◽  
Cultural Domination ◽  
The Church

In whose ‘order’, ‘newness’ and ‘foundation’ is ecclesiology based in South Africa? The colonial legacy of pigmentocracy, the cultural domination and annihilation of the indigenous dispensation of black Africans, is not devoid of institutional structures of faith and their historical performance in South Africa. The church is one institution in South Africa that played a crucial role in perpetrating perversities of racial, economic and cultural exclusion with a fetish of its institutional character that is still pervasive and dangerously residual in post-1994 South Africa. By presenting a brief outline of the basics on ecclesiology, the article argues that things remain the same the more things seem to change if the methodological approach to ecclesiology circumvents the edifice and foundations on which the history of ecclesiology in South Africa is built. To unshackle the church, a Black Theology of liberation must begin from and debunk the foundations of models of ecclesiology that are conceived on perverse theological and ideologised forms of faith that have become residually hazardous in South Africa post-1994.

Land Reform in South Africa: An Overview

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Rugege
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Agricultural Land ◽  
Black People ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Land Dispossession ◽  
Fundamental Cause ◽  
History Of ◽  
Racial Domination ◽  
The Many

South Africa suffered a long history of colonization, racial domination and land dispossession that resulted in the bulk of the agricultural land being owned by a white minority. Black people resisted being dispossessed but were defeated by the superior arms of the newcomers. As Lewin has written, “whatever minor causes there may have been for the many Bantu-European wars, the desire for land was the fundamental cause.” Despite the claims that South Africa was largely uninhabited at the time of the arrival of Europeans, documentary evidence shows that in fact the land was inhabited. Thus the journal of the first European to settle at the Cape, Jan van Riebeeck records incidents of confrontation with the indigenous Khoi-khoi (or Hottentots) in 1655.

scholarly journals Black theology versus black spirituality and black faith: The centrality of spirituality and faith in black theology of liberation in the South African context

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Olehile A. Buffel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
South Africa ◽  
Liberation Theology ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Black Theology ◽  
Spiritual Journey ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Theology Of Liberation

Black theology, which is linked to black power in the context of the United States of America and black consciousness in the context of South Africa is often regarded as having nothing to do with spirituality, faith and salvation. It is often regarded by critics as radical, militant and political. In some circles its theological character is questioned. Advocates of liberation theology, past and present are accused of mixing religion with politics. The article traces the history of black theology, as part of liberation theology, which started in the 1960s in three contexts, namely Latin America, United States of America and South Africa. The article argues that spirituality, faith and salvation are central to black theology of liberation. The critical theological reflection that black theology of liberation is all about happens in the context of the spiritual journey of the poor believer and oppressed.Contribution: The contribution that this article makes is to serve as a corrective discourse that rebuts the mistaken accusation that black liberation theology has nothing to do with spirituality and faith. The article makes a direct link between spirituality and faith on the one hand and on the other hand liberating Christian praxis of the poor in their spiritual journey, in the context of South Africans as they struggle to liberate themselves amid poverty, service delivery struggles and COVID-19 and its implications.

Black American Music and the Civilized-Uncivilized Matrix in South Africa

1996 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 28-30
Author(s):  
Johann Buis
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Black People ◽  
Reception History ◽  
American Music ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
The South ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Press ◽  
History Of The South

In a recent article by Veit Erlmann in the South African journal of musicology (SAMUS vol. 14, 1995) entitled “Africa Civilized, Africa Uncivilized,” Erlmann draws upon the reception history of the South African Zulu Choir’s visit to London in 1892 and the Ladysmith Black Mambazo presence in Paul Simon’s Graceland project to highlight the epithet “Africa civilized, Africa uncivilized.” Though the term was used by the turn of the century British press to publicize the event, the slogan carries far greater impact upon the locus of the identity of urban black people in South Africa for more than a century.

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