Trumping the Devil!

African spiritualities are hardly static or unchanging. They are dynamic and constantly in flux. African spiritualities are usually not thought out in the agora of desk theology but lived out in the spiritual marketplace, imbuing every life facet in ways that cannot be separated from quotidian, mundane thought. How do African spiritualities contrast with other social dimensions of spirituality? This chapter explores African spiritualities as spiritualities of the marketplace, concerned with the pursuit of cosmic balance, harmony, and human flourishing via a matrix of worldviews and ritual praxis. Through exploring the diversity of African spirituality and cosmologies: the forms, meanings, and expressions that link them, I demonstrate how and to what extent the religious, moral values and imaginaries pervading indigenous worldviews in Africa and the African diaspora are continually contested and negotiated.

Winged women on book covers for contemporary African fiction: Shubnum Khan’s creation for Mohale Mashigo’s Intruders (2018)

In her collection of short stories, Intruders, Mohale Mashigo (2018) draws on popular culture as well as local cultural memories as invested in South African folktales, to conjure up a fantastical world in which spirituality is often invoked. In this article, I consider the way in which the visual image of a woman with angelic wings designed for the book cover by artist Shubnum Khan, serves the purpose of marketing the commodity by means of connotations presumed to be familiar to potential readers, but also still suggestive enough to stimulate, rather than prescribe, the visual imagination ignited in the process of reading. I link book cover designer Peter Mendelsund’s argument that the reading imagination, although fuelled by memory, remains “loosely associative” and “not overtly coherent”, with Ingvild Gilhus’s cultural-historical appraisal of the angel’s appeal as such a malleable symbol of (increasingly, specifically) female superhuman capabilities. I argue that the cover image ‘works’ because of its ability to kindle memories of precolonial African spirituality, associations with Christianity, as well as images circulating in mass media.

Ubuntu as a spirituality of liberation for black 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.

Botho as an essential ingredient of African psychology: an insider perspective

The African notion of botho appears to have attracted a lot of attention and research efforts in various fields of study. It is presented as a positive concept that is associated with the good side of human beings. In this article, we have adopted an Afrocentric position to analyse the philosophical construct of ‘botho’ as lived and practised in communities that we grew up in. We acknowledge our historical and cultural locatedness in these communities and recognise that this positionality has influenced the way we have engaged with our subject matter. We have interrogated the concept of botho and have identified what we consider as its four key elements. These are African spirituality, botho as personhood, botho and interconnectedness, and botho and communalism. Through a critical discussion of these key elements, we have tried to demonstrate that botho is essentially a valid human experience that forms the bedrock of African psychology. We conclude by suggesting that botho and other themes that constitute the field of African psychology need to be acknowledged, embraced, and mobilised as foundational building blocks in the production of knowledge that is centred on and in Africa.

Religious Tourism in Africa's Global South

International tourist arrivals are projected to surpass 1.8 billion by 2030 on the back of rapid growth in emerging tourism economies. Tourism has emerged as an economic messiah for a plethora of countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. It has emerged as a cost-effective means by which countries can diversify their economies, especially countries with low economies that depend on agricultural products to diversify their economies. Religious tourism can contribute to deeper economic benefit for a destination. The synthesis of literature adds to the paucity of academic gaze on religious tourism in Southern Africa. The synthesis takes the reader on a religious tourism journey that includes African spirituality, Pentecostal Christianity, and the interface between Africans spirituality and Christianity. These areas are neglected in the academic gaze and are outside the tourism beaten track, and these forms of religious tourism bring in much needed economic activities for areas on the tourism fringe.