scholarly journals Vryheid en verbond: ’n Ou-Testamentiese perspektief

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
H.F. Du Plooy

Freedom and covenant: A perspective from the Old Testament A century after the end of the Anglo-Boer War freedom remains an important issue and some people nowadays constantly ask whether they have lost their freedom in the New South Africa. This article offers an Old Testament perspective on freedom and first of all discusses the importance of blessings and curses within the framework of the covenant. This is followed by a discussion of two passages from the Old Testament – Deuteronomy 28 and Jeremiah 34 – viewing the loss of freedom as a result of disobedience to God’s commandments. The discussion highlights the fact that political freedom could not be regarded as a basic right of a people in the time of the Old Testament. Freedom in their own land was regarded as a gift of God to Israel. To retain this freedom the people had to obey God’s commandments; otherwise this freedom could be lost. Deuteronomy 28 indicates that obedience will result in blessings, while disobedience will result in punishment. Freedom in their own land is mentioned together with the blessings and the curses. Jeremiah 34 proceeds from the same premise, but relates the loss of freedom to the people’s failure to release their slaves.

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Herman J. Pietersen

Veldsman, T.H. (2002) "Into the people effectiveness arena: Navigating between chaos and order", Randburg, South Africa: Knowledge Resources, 364 pages. In a noteworthy new South African management text, Theo Veldsman, consultant in the strategic human resource management (SHRM) field, brings together the fruit of many years of experience and thought on people management issues in an exciting new way.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-199
Author(s):  
S. D. Snyman

Violence, the Old Testament and a new South Africa In the light of the current violence in South Africa the question posed in the paper is the question on how the appearance of violence in the Old Testament should be evaluated from a theological point of view. After a brief survey of the present state of research on this theme, a theological insight into the problem of violence in the Old Testament is proposed. Finally, the relevance of this theme for a new South Africa is pointed out.


2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
J.M. Vorster

Never again? A theological-ethical evaluation of ideas about political freedom in South Africa since 1899 Various conflicting concepts of political freedom and the process of liberation have played a major part in South African society over the past century. These concepts have inherently been influenced by theological-ethical guidelines given by prominent Christian leaders and churches. This article focuses on the conflicting concepts of freedom as they were defined from a theological-ethical perspective in the old republics of Transvaal and the Orange Free State during the Anglo-Boer war which started in 1899, the apartheid society since 1948 and in the Black Liberation struggle which culminated in the democracy of 1994. In every instance the theological-ethical presuppositions used in the formulation of each particular concept of freedom are defined and analysed. In conclusion attention is paid to the state of freedom in South Africa in 2000 and the church’s responsibility to contribute to the development of an ethos of human rights from an ecumenical theological-ethical foundation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mehita Iqani

This article presents a qualitative discussion about the ways in which English-language media in South Africa labelled the Black middle class ‘new’ during the first decade of political freedom (the 1990s). The empirical approach is discursive, drawing on a corpus of archival media material in which the ‘new Black middle class’ is discussed and debated. The article argues that three key discursive trends are evident therein: the first claiming the new Black middle class as full of socio-economic potential (but also as immature and not capable of delivering on that potential), the second attempting to rehistoricize the Black middle class and the third accusing the class of materialism, greed and being ‘sell-outs’. These discursive themes are discussed in relation to relevant scholarly literature about ‘new’ middle classes. This article concludes that media narratives about the newness of the Black middle class were the site of the symbolic contestation and discursive construction of the consuming class in South Africa.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 96-115 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Clark

The 1890s were a key time for debates about imperial humanitarianism and human rights in India and South Africa. This article first argues that claims of humanitarianism can be understood as biopolitics when they involved the management and disciplining of populations. This article examines the historiography that analyses British efforts to contain the Bombay plague in 1897 and the Boer War concentration camps as forms of discipline extending control over colonized subjects. Secondly, human rights language could be used to oppose biopolitical management. While scholars have criticized liberal human rights language for its universalism, this article argues that nineteenth-century liberals did not believe that rights were universal; they had to be earned. It was radical activists who drew on notions of universal rights to oppose imperial intervention and criticize the camps in India and South Africa. These activists included two groups: the Personal Rights Association and the Humanitarian League; and the individuals Josephine Butler, Sol Plaatje, Narayan Meghaji Lokhande, and Bal Gandadhar Tilak. However, these critics also debated amongst themselves how far human rights should extend.


Author(s):  
R. R. Palmer

This chapter considers the prevailing notion in the eighteenth century that nobility was a necessary bulwark of political freedom. Whether in the interest of a more open nobility or of a more closed and impenetrable nobility, the view was the same. Nobility as such, nobility as an institution, was necessary to the maintenance of a free constitution. There was also a general consensus that parliaments or ruling councils were autonomous, self-empowered, or empowered by history, heredity, social utility, or God; that they were in an important sense irresponsible, free to oppose the King (where there was one), and certainly owing no accounting to the “people.” The remainder of the chapter deals with the uses and abuses of social rank and the problems of administration, recruitment, taxation, and class consciousness.


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