Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Glossary
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Thinking secularism from South Africa
- Chapter 2 A South African morality tale: Religion, tradition and racialised rule
- Chapter 3 Negotiated consensus and religious rights
- Chapter 4 Re-establishing traditional authority
- Chapter 5 The spirit of a new South Africa
- Chapter 6 Secular constitutionalism in South Africa?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Appendix 1 Postamble to the interim constitution
- Appendix 2 Excerpts from the final constitution
- A note on archival sou
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 2 - A South African morality tale: Religion, tradition and racialised rule
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Abbreviations and acronyms
- Glossary
- Preface
- Chapter 1 Thinking secularism from South Africa
- Chapter 2 A South African morality tale: Religion, tradition and racialised rule
- Chapter 3 Negotiated consensus and religious rights
- Chapter 4 Re-establishing traditional authority
- Chapter 5 The spirit of a new South Africa
- Chapter 6 Secular constitutionalism in South Africa?
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Appendix 1 Postamble to the interim constitution
- Appendix 2 Excerpts from the final constitution
- A note on archival sou
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The natives must be made clearly to understand and to realise that the presence and predominance of the White race will be preserved at all hazards, and that all attempts to destroy its hegemony, whether overt or covert, such as the Ethiopian propaganda, will be promptly punished, instead of being disdainfully treated, as in the past.
Natal Native Affairs Commission 1907 (Sundkler, 1948:69)South Africa has a long and complex history of entanglement between religion, tradition and political rule. Until the political transition in the 1990s, governance was not secular. Despite their many differences, successive regimes made use of Christian political theologies and what I will call here ‘things African’, a phrase introduced by John and Jean Comaroff (2004), to secure rule without democratic legitimacy. They attempted a subordination of black interests to white rule by instrumentalising traditional leadership, customary law, Christianity, violence and duplicitous forms of legality. The apartheid government claimed explicitly that South Africa was a Christian country, ruled, however perversely, in terms of Christian values.
The country was not secular prior to 1994, in a variety of ways. From the establishment of a national state in 1910, South African governments consistently espoused a political theology to legitimate white rule. The state instituted a variety of relationships with religious institutions, sometimes appropriating church resources, sometimes drawing close to churches for political legitimation and sometimes harassing and unleashing violence upon religious groups and leaders. Aspects of modern statecraft were turned towards the antidemocratic politics of white rule.
Writing in these areas requires the uncomfortable but necessary reproduction of the racist language of racial governance. Some of this chapter refers to primary materials of the colonial administration, missionaries and apartheid bureaucrats. The language of these documents is often offensive, referring to ‘Kaffirs’, ‘heathens’, ‘natives’, ‘Bantu’ and the like. They are referenced in this chapter because it was on these terms that religion and culture were racially marked across time; authorising violence, exclusions and techniques of subjugation.
DIFFERENTIATION AND SEPARATION
Religious Studies scholarship has repeatedly pointed out that the concept of religion as a universal category of human life is, in fact, modern (see, for example, Masuzawa, 2005) and the distinction between religion and other domains, such as politics, economy and culture, is a product of secularism (Jäger, 2007).
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- Information
- The State of SecularismReligion, Tradition and Democracy in South Africa, pp. 27 - 50Publisher: Wits University PressPrint publication year: 2017