Afrikaners And The Boundaries Of Faith In Post Apartheid South Africa

This book examines the shifting moral and spiritual lives of white Afrikaners in South Africa after apartheid. The end of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial and spatial segregation sparked wide-reaching social change as social, cultural, spatial and racial boundaries were transgressed and transformed. This book investigates how Afrikaners have mediated the country’s shifting boundaries within the realm of religion. For instance, one in every three Afrikaners used these new freedoms to leave the traditional Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), often for an entirely new religious affiliation within the Pentecostal or Charismatic churches, or New Religious Movements such as Wiccan neopaganism. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Western Cape area, the book investigates what spiritual life after racial totalitarianism means for the members of the ethnic group that constructed and maintained that very totalitarianism. Ultimately, the book asks how these new Afrikaner religious practices contribute to social solidarity and integration in a persistently segregated society, and what they can tell us about racial relations in the country today. This book will be of interest to scholars of religious studies, social and cultural anthropology and African studies.

This book examines the shifting moral and spiritual lives of white Afrikaners in South Africa after apartheid. The end of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial and spatial segregation sparked wide-reaching social change as social, cultural, spatial and racial boundaries were transgressed and transformed. This book investigates how Afrikaners have mediated the country’s shifting boundaries within the realm of religion. For instance, one in every three Afrikaners used these new freedoms to leave the traditional Dutch Reformed Church (NGK), often for an entirely new religious affiliation within the Pentecostal or Charismatic churches, or New Religious Movements such as Wiccan neopaganism. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Western Cape area, the book investigates what spiritual life after racial totalitarianism means for the members of the ethnic group that constructed and maintained that very totalitarianism. Ultimately, the book asks how these new Afrikaner religious practices contribute to social solidarity and integration in a persistently segregated society, and what they can tell us about racial relations in the country today. This book will be of interest to scholars of religious studies, social and cultural anthropology and African studies.

Racial Integration in the Church of Apartheid relates the struggle of South Africa’s Reformed churches to overcome their apartheid past and merge into one multiracial church. It uncovers the potential of faith communities and their limits in untangling religious-nationalist affiliations.

South Africa has been reeling under the recent blows of an apparent resurgence of crude public manifestations of racism and a hardening of attitudes on both sides of the racial divide. To probe this topic as it relates to white South Africans, Afrikaans and Afrikaners, MISTRA, in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), convened a round-table discussion. The discourse was rigorous. This volume comprises the varied and thought-provoking presentations from that event, including a keynote address by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, inputs from Melissa Steyn, Andries Nel, Mary Burton, Christi van der Westhuizen, Lynette Steenveld, Bobby Godsell, Dirk Hermann (of Solidarity), Ernst Roets (of Afriforum), Xhanti Payi, Mathatha Tsedu, Pieter Duvenage, Hein Willemse and Nico Koopman, and closing remarks by Achille Mbembe and Mathews Phosa. It deals with a range of issues around "whiteness" in general and delves into the place of Afrikaners and the Afrikaans language in democratic South Africa, demonstrating that there is no homogeneity of views on these topics among white South Africans overall and Afrikaners in particular. In fact, in these pages, one finds a multifaceted effort to scrub energetically at the boundaries that apartheid imposed on all South Africans in different ways.

Knowledge transmission and generation belong to the core mission of the public university. In democratic South Africa, the transformation of these processes and practices in higher education has become an urgent and contested task. The Faculty of Theology at the University of the Free State has already done some original work on the implications of these for theology. One area of investigation that has not yet received due attention concerns the role of theological disciplines, and especially the relation between academic disciplines and societal dynamics. This research project addresses the challenge and this volume reflects the intellectual endeavour of lectures, research fellows and a post-graduate student associated with the faculty. Each theological discipline has its own history and has already experienced reconstruction, both globally and in South Africa. Some of these genealogical developments and re-envisioning are mapped by the contributions in this volume. The critical questions addressed are: what are the contours of the (post)apartheid condition and what are the implications for responsible disciplinary practices in theology? The chapters convey an impression of the vitality of theology at the University of the Free State and in South Africa and give expression to fundamental shifts that have taken place in theological disciplines, and also of future tasks. This research project aims to stimulate reflection on responsible and innovative disciplinary practices of theology in South Africa, which, we envisage, will contribute to social justice and human flourishing. -Rian Venter, University of the Free State

ÿ ?[It] reflects original research and contributes to new developments in the field of theology and religion with regard to its developmental role within a transformation context. The book may easily stand out in future as seminal in the way that it promoted the social development debate of the church and its organisational structures from an interdisciplinary focus.? ? Prof Antoinette Lombard Department of Social Work and Criminology University of Pretoria

This book contains chapters by 14 prominent figures offering information on key issues concerning the Christian faith in South Africa. Three quarters of South Africans regard themselves as Christians. The story of the gospel of love and its interplay with politics is the theme pursued here.