scholarly journals 'Democracy is coming to the RSA': On democracy, theology, and futural historicity

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert R. Vosloo
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
South African ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
The Future ◽  
Democratic System ◽  
To Come

This article brings the concept of democracy � as an open-ended tradition � in conversation with notions dealing with historicity and the future, such as �democracy to come�, �promise�, and �a democratic vision�. It is argued that although these notions are rightfully associated with the future, they also imply that democracy should not be disconnected from an emphasis on an inheritance from the past. With this emphasis in mind, the first part of the article attends to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida�s intriguing term, �democracy to come�, whereas the second part of the article takes a closer look at some aspects of the work of the South African theologian John de Gruchy on democracy, with special reference to his distinction between a democratic system and a democratic vision. The third, and final, part of the article brings some of the insights taken from the engagement with Derrida and De Gruchy into conversation with the continuing challenges facing theological discourse on democracy in South Africa today.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: A constructive proposal is made that emphasises the futural openness of democracy in a way that challenges a vague utopianism.Keywords: Democracy; Derrida; De Gruchy; future; historicity

The birth of educational archaeology in South Africa

Antiquity ◽  
2000 ◽  
Vol 74 (283) ◽  
pp. 159-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda B. Esterhuysen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
African Education ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
South African Education

Archaeology in education has been introduced in South Africa only recently as the politics of the past precluded the application of archaeology in the classroom. This paper presents the background to South African education and educational archaeology and discusses some of the issues and studies undertaken in South Africa. It also offers comment on the factors which determine and shape educational archaeology of the present and those that may affect the discipline of archaeology in the future.

Dystopias in the Kingdom of Israel: Prophetic Narratives of Destruction in Recent Hebrew Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-31
Author(s):  
Gil Hochberg
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Hebrew Literature ◽  
Jewish State ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
To Come ◽  
Apartheid Regime ◽  
Current Reality

Abstract This article is about a recent wave of literary dystopias published in Israel, most of which center on the soon-to-come destruction of the Jewish state. Notable among these are The Third (Ha-shlishi) by Yishai Sarid (2015), Mud (Tit) by Dror Burstein (2016), and Nuntia (Kfor) by Shimon Adaf (2010). These texts draw on biblical or Rabbinic Hebrew, Jewish sources, and Jewish historical events (specifically the destruction of the First and Second Temples), making them just as much about a dystopian past as they are about a dystopian future. They are, in other words, dystopias of a circular temporality: emerging from and moving toward (Jewish) dystopia. This recent wave of Israeli dystopian narratives is primarily preoccupied with the past and future of Judaism, the Jewish people, and Israel as a secular-yet-Jewish state. Most interesting, perhaps, is the complete absence of Palestinians from these texts and from this dystopic imagination. Despite their obvious presence in Israel’s current reality, Palestinians have no role whatsoever in these texts. We are dealing therefore with exclusively Jewish dystopias. Read against some of the dystopian white South African writings under Apartheid, the complete absence of Palestinians in the recently published Israeli dystopias, appears particularly disheartening. Neither partner nor enemy, Palestinians do not even share in a future nightmare with Israeli Jews. We are left with the following questions: Does writing a Jewish Israeli dystopia require eliminating Palestinians from the narrative? Is it possible (how is it possible?) to think of a Jewish (Israeli) future, present, and past without thinking about a Palestinian past, present, and future? Following the example of South African dystopias, this article concludes that for such literary and ethical concerns to be critically explored, Israel must first be (officially) recognized as an apartheid regime.

scholarly journals Untimely Meditation: Nietzsche et cetera

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 631
Author(s):  
Arno Böhler
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Eternal Return ◽  
Philosophical Thinking ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Stage 4 ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
To Come ◽  
Mode Of Being

The following lecture performance was a part of the research festival Philosophy On Stage#4 at Tanzquartier Wien, where new relations between philosophy and the arts were tested and put into practice. The lecture starts with the claim that philosophical thinking necessarily performs the temporality of the untimely as a mode of being-in-time, which realises a revolt of time against its times in favour of a time to come. Being neither part of the past nor of eternity, the temporality of the untimely calls future events into being.Insofar as philosophy shares the temporality of the untimely with the arts, the lecture-performance defines arts-based philosophy––the alliance of art and philosophy, by which philosophy has started to implement artistic practices into philosophy––as a field for the appearance of the untimely. As Jacques Derrida has shown in Politics of Friendship, the proposition “Alas! if only you knew how soon, how very soon, things will be – different! –”, characterises precisely the aporetic principle of a democracy of the future, grounded in the temporality of the untimely. The genitive ‘of’ thereby indicates a mode of democracy which does only exist as long as it keeps itself open towards its own changeability and eventfulness. Therefore it necessarily takes place as the prelude of a future one is able to affirm full heartedly in advance, that is to say, over and over again. A mode of being-in-time that touches the secret of Nietzsche’s most abysmal thought: the thought of the eternal return of the same, in which somebody has realized the never ending eternity loops of be-coming; a life of immanence; a recurring movement of eternity within itself.

scholarly journals FORECASTING THE FUTURE OF RELIGION IN THE 1920s: RAMSDEN BALMFORTH’S POST-ORTHODOX PROGNOSTICATIONS

2015 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-37
Author(s):  
Frederick Hale
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
South African ◽  
Broad Spectrum ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
African Christianity ◽  
The Future ◽  
To Come

Standing at the apogee of post-Protestant theological liberalism, the scholarly Unitarian minister Ramsden Balmforth, who served the Unitarian Church in Cape Town from 1897 until 1937, responded to a broad spectrum of issues affecting South African religious, political and economic life. Having been moulded by Fabian socialism in his native Yorkshire, however, and informed by the theology of such denominational fellows as Joseph Estlin Carpenter during his student years in Oxford, he remained relatively marginalised on the ecclesiastical landscape of South Africa. Despite this quasi-isolation, Balmforth sought in the late 1920s to predict the future of Christianity or religious life generally not only in his adopted homeland, but also on an international scale. In the present article his conceptualisation is analysed in the historical context of his theological liberalism generally, and a critique of his prognostications is offered which highlights Balmforth’s failure to come to grips with the fact that his liberalism, which he regarded as a virtually inevitable product of cultural history, had failed to make nearly any inroads on the increasingly complex kaleidoscope of South African Christianity.

scholarly journals Discerning a theological agenda for spatial justice in South Africa: An imperative for sustained reconciliation

2016 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan De Beer
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Spatial Transformation ◽  
Spatial Turn ◽  
Spatial Justice ◽  
African Cities ◽  
The Past ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Spatial Consciousness ◽  
South African Cities

A spatial turn has occurred in various disciplines over the past decades. This article holds that it has not occurred in a similar decisive manner in theological discourse and not in South Africa in particular. After considering the necessity of a spatial turn and spatial consciousness, the article examines the concept of spatial justice against the backdrop of how injustice was and is spatially expressed in South African cities. Considering the way in which South African cities have evolved since the Native Land Act of 1913 – the segregated and apartheid city and the (post)apartheid city – the article then argues that deep and sustained reconciliation will be impossible should current spatial patterns of segregation, exclusion and injustice continue. It advocates theological and ecclesial participation in a national agenda for spatial transformation, to be fleshed out in relation to four interconnected challenges: land, landlessness, housing and home; the ‘creative destruction’ of neighbourhoods, gentrification and the displacement of the poor; participation in city-making (from below) and transformative spatial interventions; and close collaboration with social movements working for spatial justice. It concludes by asserting that such a trans- and/or postdisciplinary agenda for spatial justice would participate with the Spirit to mend the oikos of God.

Waiting and the Legacy of Apartheid

Matatu ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Remi Akujobi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Family Life ◽  
Social Reproduction ◽  
Third World ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
The Third ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Third World

With debates about the issues of liberation, centering, and empowerment dominating the African literary landscape, particularly in works written by women, it is not surprising to find that the issue of ‘waiting’ occupies centre stage in Njabulo Ndebele’s novel The Cry of Winnie Mandela (2003). Much, of course, has been written on this work, which focuses on the peculiar problems facing women in contemporary South Africa, but the object of this essay is to examine the theme of waiting as it is made manifest in the literary production of the Third-World level of South African life under apartheid. The background to this literature is infiltration, colonialism, and exploitation in the lives of simple people struggling for survival and meaning in a harsh world. Through complex negotiations, women are attempting to come to terms with their increasingly visible role as breadwinners in the absence of their menfolk. This produces unexpected reconfigurations, personal and familial. One question addressed is whether these reconfigurations represent a crisis in the relations of social reproduction or a transition to new forms of family life. The novel is characterized by elements of the fantastic and mythical woven into a deceptively simple story that scrutinizes society at its base in a state of post-apartheid hangover.

“Lest We Forget”: A Postapartheid Perspective on Remembering in Liturgy for Healing and Justice

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-72
Author(s):  
Hilton Scott
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
South African ◽  
South African Context ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Future ◽  
African Context

The idea of Remembrance Day (also known as Armistice Day) in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries carries two important notions: (1) to remember significant tragedies and sacrifices of the past by paying homage, and (2) to ensure that such catastrophes are prevented in the future by not forgetting. This concept can be applied to the South African context of a society and young democracy that is living in the wake of apartheid. In certain spheres this will include decolonizing the long-standing practices of Remembrance Day in South Africa, ritualizing the event(s) to be more relevant to those who partake by shifting the focus to tragedies caused during apartheid, and remembering that such a deplorable catastrophe should never be repeated. The important liturgical functions and pragmatic outcome(s) of this notion are reconciliation, restoration, transformation and, ultimately, liberation, as South Africans look to heal the wounds caused by the tragedies of the recent past and prevent such pain from being inflicted on others in the future.

Accountability: The Debate in South Africa

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Kollapen
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Solid Base ◽  
National Unity ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Just Society ◽  
To Come

The constitutional and political negotiations in South Africa have reached an advanced stage and elections for a government of national unity might take place within the next twelve months. For the millions of South Africans who have waited, fought, sacrificed and suffered the end appears to be in sight. While they will have every right to celebrate the results of their hard-fought battles to achieve a democratic and just society, they equally have a solemn duty to ensure that they proceed to build the future on a solid base, not only to guarantee the protection of democracy and justice but more importantly to ensure that no other South African is ever again the victim of the types of human rights abuses that have for the past decades become synonymous with the country. There will only be one opportunity to rebuild the nation. If it fails it will be a great disservice to South Africa's countrymen and women and to the generations that will follow. Even as a South African one has difficulty in fully comprehending the enormity of the social and human destruction caused in the name of apartheid. It has brutalized and dispossessed its people; robbed children of their youth and their innocence; widowed and orphaned thousands and destroyed the dreams and hopes of decent men and women. The 18 million people gaoled in terms of the pass laws and the 15.5 million people uprooted by forced removals bear testimony to the brutality and savagery with which apartheid was applied. The legacy of those policies will remain for many years to come.

Suicidal Behavior in Black South Africans

Crisis ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lourens Schlebusch ◽  
Naseema B.M. Vawda ◽  
Brenda A. Bosch
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Suicidal Behavior ◽  
Health Care Facilities ◽  
South African Society ◽  
South Africans ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
Care Facilities ◽  
Black South Africans ◽  
To Come

Summary: In the past suicidal behavior among Black South Africans has been largely underresearched. Earlier studies among the other main ethnic groups in the country showed suicidal behavior in those groups to be a serious problem. This article briefly reviews some of the more recent research on suicidal behavior in Black South Africans. The results indicate an apparent increase in suicidal behavior in this group. Several explanations are offered for the change in suicidal behavior in the reported clinical populations. This includes past difficulties for all South Africans to access health care facilities in the Apartheid (legal racial separation) era, and present difficulties of post-Apartheid transformation the South African society is undergoing, as the people struggle to come to terms with the deleterious effects of the former South African racial policies, related socio-cultural, socio-economic, and other pressures.

The Final ‘Thank You’

Derrida Today ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Grant Farred
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Political Transition ◽  
The Other ◽  
World Cup ◽  
The Core ◽  
Nelson Mandela ◽  
Black President ◽  
The Moment

‘The Final “Thank You”’ uses the work of Jacques Derrida and Friedrich Nietzsche to think the occasion of the 1995 rugby World Cup, hosted by the newly democratic South Africa. This paper deploys Nietzsche's Zarathustra to critique how a figure such as Nelson Mandela is understood as a ‘Superman’ or an ‘Overhuman’ in the moment of political transition. The philosophical focus of the paper, however, turns on the ‘thank yous’ exchanged by the white South African rugby captain, François Pienaar, and the black president at the event of the Springbok victory. It is the value, and the proximity and negation, of the ‘thank yous’ – the relation of one to the other – that constitutes the core of the article. 1

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