scholarly journals The power of forgiveness in a broken world: An understanding of forgiveness in Ephesians

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elma M. Cornelius
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Relationship With God ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Pertinent Question ◽  
Broken World

South Africans live in a broken country where hatred leads to violence and destroys the relationships between people. The pertinent question here is: Is forgiveness between South Africans possible? This article is an attempt to understand ‘forgiveness’ in Ephesians, and to discuss the power of such forgiveness in a violent and broken South Africa. Ephesians 4:23 demands a change in the people’s mindset in order to be able to, inter alia, be kind and compassionate when they forgive each other (Eph 4:32). This forgiveness means to take control as a believer and to use one’s power as a Christian to forgive because God forgave us. We need to be the initiators of the transaction. Forgiveness is a ‘means for imitating God’, for ‘carrying out God’s plan’, and ‘enhancing one’s relationship’ with God. Forgiveness will restore relations; it is a gift to oneself and to others, to society, to one’s country. Ephesians advises to no longer rehearse and re-think the memories of pain, to stop harbouring and nursing grudges, to stop playing the victim and perpetuating negative emotions associated with this rehearsing, and to break people’s commitment to remain angry.Contribution: Ephesians aims to persuade believers that forgiveness is a choice to imitate God. Forgiveness is an act out of grace, kindness, and compassion.

Reframing Xenophobia in South Africa as Colour-Blind: The Limits of the Afro Phobia Thesis

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-444
Author(s):  
Amanuel Isak Tewolde
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Conflict Theory ◽  
Black African ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
Online Newspaper ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
Realistic Conflict Theory

Many scholars and South African politicians characterize the widespread anti-foreigner sentiment and violence in South Africa as dislike against migrants and refugees of African origin which they named ‘Afro-phobia’. Drawing on online newspaper reports and academic sources, this paper rejects the Afro-phobia thesis and argues that other non-African migrants such as Asians (Pakistanis, Indians, Bangladeshis and Chinese) are also on the receiving end of xenophobia in post-apartheid South Africa. I contend that any ‘outsider’ (White, Asian or Black African) who lives and trades in South African townships and informal settlements is scapegoated and attacked. I term this phenomenon ‘colour-blind xenophobia’. By proposing this analytical framework and integrating two theoretical perspectives — proximity-based ‘Realistic Conflict Theory (RCT)’ and Neocosmos’ exclusivist citizenship model — I contend that xenophobia in South Africa targets those who are in close proximity to disadvantaged Black South Africans and who are deemed outsiders (e.g., Asian, African even White residents and traders) and reject arguments that describe xenophobia in South Africa as targeting Black African refugees and migrants.

Is Xenophobic Violence and Criminality Systemic in Post-Apartheid South Africa? A Critical Analysis of Growing Denialism to 2015 Incidents

Politeia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mbekezeli Comfort Mkhize ◽  
Kongko Louis Makau
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Foreign Nationals ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Structural Problems ◽  
The Government

This article argues that the 2015 xenophobic violence was allowed to spread due to persistent inaction by state officials. While the utterances of King Goodwill Zwelithini have in part fuelled the attacks, officials tend to perceive acts of xenophobia as ordinary crimes. This perception has resulted in ill-advised responses from the authorities, allowing this kind of hate crime against foreign nationals to engulf the whole country. In comparison with similar attacks in 2008, the violent spree in 2015 is characterised by a stronger surge in criminal activities. The militancy showcased fed a sense of insecurity amongst foreigners, creating a situation inconsistent with the country’s vaunted respect for human rights and the rule of law. Investors lost confidence in the country’s outlook, owing in part to determined denialism in government circles regarding the targeting of foreigners. While drawing from existing debates, the article’s principal objective is to critically examine the structural problems that enable xenophobia to proliferate and the (in)effectiveness of responses to the militancy involved in the 2015 attacks. Of particular interest are the suggested responses that could be effective in curbing future violence. The article concludes that xenophobia is systemic in post-apartheid South Africa. Strong cooperation between the government, national and international organisations could provide the basis for successful anti-xenophobia measures. The article further argues that the country is obliged to find a sustainable solution to the predicament for humanitarian reasons firstly, and in recognition of the support South Africans received from its African counterparts during the liberation struggle.

SOUTH AFRICA IN THE CINEMATIC IMAGINARY: THE STORY OF A WHITE YOUTH IN SKIN

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 170-178
Author(s):  
Khatija Bibi Khan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Spiritual Development ◽  
Black People ◽  
White Youth ◽  
Multiple Selves ◽  
Social Imaginaries ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Rapid Production ◽  
New Critics ◽  
Good Number

The rapid production of films of diversity in post-1994 South Africa has unfortunately not been matched by critical works on film. Part of the reason is that some of the films recycle old themes that celebrate the worst in black people. Another possible reason could be that a good number of films wallow in personality praise, and certainly of Mandela, especially after his demise. Despite these problems of film criticism in post-1994 South Africa, it appears that some new critics have not felt compelled to waste their energy on analysing the Bantustan film – a kind of film that was made for black people by the apartheid system but has re-surfaced after 1994 in different ways. The patent lack of more critical works on film that engages the identities and social imaginaries of young and white South Africans is partly addressed in SKIN – a film that registers the mental growth and spiritual development of Sandra’s multiple selves. This article argues that SKIN portrays the racial neurosis of the apartheid system; and the question of identity affecting young white youths during and after apartheid is experienced at the racial, gender and sex levels.

The Prophetic Voice of the Church in a Democratic South Africa – A Theological Reflection

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lufuluvhi Maria Mudimeli
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
The State ◽  
Black Liberation ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Black Liberation Theology ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Church

This article is a reflection on the role and contribution of the church in a democratic South Africa. The involvement of the church in the struggle against apartheid is revisited briefly. The church has played a pivotal and prominent role in bringing about democracy by being a prophetic voice that could not be silenced even in the face of death. It is in this time of democracy when real transformation is needed to take its course in a realistic way, where the presence of the church has probably been latent and where it has assumed an observer status. A look is taken at the dilemmas facing the church. The church should not be bound and taken captive by any form of loyalty to any political organisation at the expense of the poor and the voiceless. A need for cooperation and partnership between the church and the state is crucial at this time. This paper strives to address the role of the church as a prophetic voice in a democratic South Africa. Radical economic transformation, inequality, corruption, and moral decadence—all these challenges hold the potential to thwart our young democracy and its ideals. Black liberation theology concepts are employed to explore how the church can become prophetically relevant in democracy. Suggestions are made about how the church and the state can best form partnerships. In avoiding taking only a critical stance, the church could fulfil its mandate “in season and out of season” and continue to be a prophetic voice on behalf of ordinary South Africans.

A History of the Present

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashwin Desai ◽  
Goolam Vahed
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Transnational Organizations ◽  
Intellectual Interest ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Fitting In

While small in number, the place of the Indian in South Africa has historically loomed large because of their strong commercial and professional middle class, international influence through India, the commitment of many Indians to the anti-apartheid struggle and the prominent role that they have played in political and economic life post-apartheid. A History of the Present is the first book-length overview of Indian South Africans in the quarter century following the end of apartheid. Based on oral interviews and archival research it threads a narrative of the lives of Indian South Africans that ranges from the working class men and women to the heady heights of the newly minted billionaires; the changes wrought in the fields of religion and gender; opportunities offered on the sporting fields; the search for roots both locally and in India that also witnesses the rise of transnational organizations. Indians in South Africa appear to be always caught in an infernal contradiction; too traditional, too insular, never fitting in, while also too modern, too mobile. While focusing on Indian South Africans, this study makes critical interventions into several charged political discussions in post-apartheid South Africa, especially the debate over race and identity, while also engaging in discussions of wider intellectual interest, including diaspora, nation, and citizenship.

scholarly journals Total Quality Management (TQM): A Catalyst for Service Delivery in the South African Police Service

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Michael Reddy
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Total Quality ◽  
South Africans ◽  
South African Police Service ◽  
War Zone ◽  
Constitutional Right ◽  
South African Police ◽  
Social And Cultural Factors ◽  
Policy Solutions

September 2014 marked the release of the 2013/14 crime statistics in South Africa by the National Commissioner of the SAPS and the Minister of Police. Does a sense of safety and security fill the atmosphere? Do most South Africans, investors, and tourists alike believe that the crime rate in South Africa is reflective of a war zone and that South Africa is in a quagmire that engenders irretrievable damage to the lives of the citizenry and the economy? It is accepted that crime is a conflation of a number of economic, social and cultural factors; hence as a reviewable point, can the SAPS ensure the development of unassailable and perpetual policy solutions, underpinned with the highest quality that provides a guarantee of the citizen’s basic constitutional right to freedom and life. This article reviews literature on TQM and extrapolates lessons learnt to the practical functioning of the SAPS with a view to provide a myriad of TQM principles that may be considered by SAPS Management; this could serve as a catalyst for an improved policing service in South Africa.

U.S. Policy Towards Angola Since 1975

1992 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inge Tvedten
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
New York ◽  
Political Stability ◽  
Economic Recovery ◽  
The South ◽  
Peace Agreement ◽  
Armed Struggle ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Government

It is generally agreed that the battle of Cuito Cuanavale in March 1988 marked the final attempt to secure a military solution to the Angolan conflict. Thereafter, in December 1988, South Africa, Cuba, and Angola signed the so-called ‘New York accord’ that included a timetable for the phased withdrawal of the South Africans and the Cubans from Namibia and Angola, respectively; in June 1989, the Gbadolite agreement initiated African attempts to end the continuing armed struggle in Angola; and in March 1990, Namibia achieved its long-awaited independence. But despite these efforts and developments, the war continued between the Government that had been established in Luanda by the Movimento Popular de Libertacão de Angola (M.P.L.A.) in November 1975 and the União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (Unita), with devastating implications for the country's estimated ten million inhabitants. Not before May 1991 was a final peace agreement signed in Portugal, and then with considerably poorer options for political stability and economic recovery than would have been the case after the original accord in New York.

As the Postcolonial Moment Deepens: A Response to Green, Sonn, and Matsebula

2007 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 420-424 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Steyn
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
State Power ◽  
World Order ◽  
Whiteness Studies ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Racial Privilege

Green, Sonn, and Matsebula's (2007) article is useful in helping to establish and develop whiteness studies in South African academia, and thus to shift the academic gaze from the margins to the centre. The article is published in the wake of three waves of international whiteness studies, which successively described whiteness as a space of taken-for-granted privilege; a series of historically different but related spaces; and, finally, as part of the global, postcolonial world order. Green, Sonn, and Matsebula's (2007) contribution could be extended by more fully capturing the dissimilarity in the texture of the experience of whiteness in Australia and South Africa. In South Africa whiteness has never had the quality of invisibility that is implied in the ‘standard’ whiteness literature, and in post-apartheid South Africa white South Africans cannot assume the same privileges, with such ease, when state power is overtly committed to breaking down racial privilege.

State, Myth, and Agency in the Construction of Chinese South African Identities, 1948–1994

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoon Jung Park
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Social Acceptance ◽  
African State ◽  
Active Role ◽  
Fourth Generation ◽  
Chinese History ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Chinese Descent ◽  
Racial Ethnic

AbstractBased on the author's PhD research, this article focuses on the fluid and contested nature of the identities — racial, ethnic, and national — of people of Chinese descent in South Africa in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. The research focuses on the approximately 12,000-strong community of second-, third-, and fourth-generation South African-born Chinese South Africans. It reveals that Chinese South Africans played an active role in identity construction using Chinese history, myths and culture, albeit within the constraints established by apartheid. During the latter part of apartheid, movement up the socio-economic ladder and gradual social acceptance by white South Africa propelled them into nebulous, interstitial spaces; officially they remained “non-white” but increasingly they were viewed as “honorary whites.” During the late 1970s and 1980s, the South African state attempted to redefine Chinese as “white” but these attempts failed because Chinese South Africans were unwilling to sacrifice their unique ethnic identity, which helped them to survive the more dehumanizing aspects of life under apartheid.

scholarly journals Deploying a Fotonovela to Combat Methamphetamine Abuse among South Africans with Varying Levels of Health Literacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (12) ◽  
pp. 6334
Author(s):  
Burt Davis ◽  
Carel J. M. Jansen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Health Literacy ◽  
Healthcare Providers ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Western Cape Province ◽  
Disadvantaged Communities ◽  
South Africans ◽  
Health Related

Poor health literacy in the Western Cape Province of South Africa is one of the main factors hampering methamphetamine (MA) use prevention efforts in the area, where the abuse of this drug is a major health and social problem affecting especially previously disadvantaged communities. In the first part of a two-part study, we compared a health-related fotonovela about MA to an existing brochure group and a control group. Main findings show that the vast majority of readers preferred the fotonovela over the existing brochure. This included participants from all three age groups and for both levels of health literacy (low/high) distinguished (N = 372). Furthermore, specifically for older people with low levels of health literacy, the fotonovela outperformed the existing brochure condition for knowledge level. In the second part of the study, we found that healthcare providers (N = 75) strongly prefer a fotonovela over an existing brochure, while this cohort viewed the potential use of fotonovelas in a health care setting as very positive. Our findings add to the promising results of an earlier fotonovela study about MA use in South Africa, providing further support for considering using narratives in health communication as a serious option to effectively communicate convincing health information about this drug to target audiences in the Western Cape Province.

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