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178 pages

English

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Description

Indexed in Clarivate Analytics Book Citation Index (Web of Science Core Collection)
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 South African Constitution

Sujets

Constitutional

Philosophie et théologie

Religión

State

Politics

Religion

LAW

Informations

Publié par	WITS University Press
Date de parution	01 septembre 2017
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776141036
Langue	English

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Extrait

The State of Secularism
Religion, Tradition and Democracy in South Africa
Dhammamegha Annie Leatt
Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg, 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright Dhammamegha Annie Leatt 2017
Published edition Wits University Press 2017
First published 2017
978-1-77614-057-2 (Print)
978-1-77614-103-6 (EPUB)
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher, except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act, Act 98 of 1978.
The manuscript for this book, The State of Secularism: Religion, tradition and democracy in South Africa , won the University of the Witwatersrand Research Committee Publication Award in 2016.
Copyeditor: Pat Tucker
Proofreader: Elsab Birkenmayer
Indexer: Miri van Rooyen
Cover design: Naadira Patel
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 sources Bibliography Index
Abbreviations and acronyms ACDP African Christian Democratic Party AIC African Independent Church ANC African National Congress AWB Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) CA Constitutional Assembly CLARA Communal Land Rights Act Codesa Convention for a Democratic South Africa Contralesa Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa Cope Congress of the People COSAG Concerned South Africans Group Cosatu Congress of South African Trade Unions CP Conservative Party DA Democratic Alliance DP Democratic Party DRC Dutch Reformed Church (see NGK) EFF Economic Freedom Fighters FF Freedom Front Gear Growth, Employment and Redistribution GNU Government of national unity HSRC Human Sciences Research Council IFP Inkatha Freedom Party KZN KwaZulu-Natal LMS London Missionary Society MPL Muslim Personal Law MPNP Multiparty Negotiations Process NGK Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk (see DRC) NGO Non-governmental organisation NILC National Interfaith Leadership Council NP National Party NRLF National Religious Leaders Forum PAC Pan Africanist Congress of Azania RCMA Recognition of Customary Marriages Act of 1998 RDP Reconstruction and Development Programme SACC South African Council of Churches SACP South African Communist Party SALC South African Law Commission SANNC South African Native National Congress (precursor to the ANC) SAPS South African Police Services SYC Shatale Youth Congress TBVC Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei TC1 Theme Committee One TC4 Technical Committee on Fundamental Rights during the Transition TRC Truth and Reconciliation Commission UDF United Democratic Front UDM United Democratic Movement WCRP World Conference on Religion and Peace WCPCC Western Cape Provincial Council of Churches ZCC Zion Christian Church
Glossary amabutho warriors amakhosi plural of inkhosi; also magoshi or bagoshi baruti plural of moruti bogadi see ilobola imbizo a traditional council meeting, now designating any conference imbongi praise poet of praise singer inkhosi/inkosi/nkosi a chief or ruler; God ilobola/lobola the payment made from a groom to a bride s family before marriage moruti minister of religion Nkosi sikelel iAfrika God bless Africa (South Africa s national anthem) sangoma traditional healer, particularly a diviner rather than a herbalist sjambok a leather whip talaq divorce by repudiation in Muslim personal law ubuntu from a phrase common to the Nguni languages of South Africa, which translates as a human is only human because of other humans ; it has become shorthand for a philosophy of African humanism that stresses interdependence ulama Muslim legal scholars umma the community of Muslims volkekunde folk studies; apartheid s state-sponsored ethnography volkstaat independent Afrikaner state or homeland volksfront people s front
Preface
For readers who are interested in ideas about secularism, the first chapter is the place to start this book. There you will find a model of political secularism that I have used to understand religion and tradition in South Africa s transition. I suggest that secularism is a normative account of the place of religion in society and government and a way of ensuring that religion is held in that place. As background to this account the first chapter details something of the history of secularism, what forms it has taken around the world and what it means for religion in different contexts. Here I introduce the ideas of differentiation, separation and relationship between the religious and the political as the key operations of secularism.
I also extend some ways of thinking about secularism to traditional and customary authority and law, something that is rather unusual in writings about secularism. I ve become convinced that there are large areas of overlap between the religious and the customary in relation to power, authority and everyday practices of social reproduction. I hope this approach, and the form of analysis it offers, helps towards an understanding of other postcolonial contexts and situations where Christianity is not the only or main religion.
For those who are less interested in the concepts and want to go straight to South Africa and its history, the second chapter is a good place to start. There I offer what I call a morality tale - reflections on the ways religion and traditional authority were entangled in or against racialised rule in South Africa s past. The argument in this chapter is that secularism was impossible before democracy because there could be no normative place for religion or tradition. Instead, various forms of white government tried to annex or use living traditions to authorise white rule and deny moral or political community between rulers and ruled.
For those whose main interest lies in the negotiations, the next three chapters look at the great, slow drama that was the constitutional negotiations and the political transition. Amid violence, competing interests and the minutiae of diverse technical and legal processes, a consensus and a Constitution were born together. It was not an easy birth. In fact, it was far more difficult than most South Africans now remember. It was more violent, more arbitrary and more technical.
In these chapters, 3 to 5, I have sought to shed light on what was at stake in often painstaking debates about the law and the future. There were not just one or two people who had it in their power to decide how things would turn out. Instead, there were many players with diverse interests and perspectives, who sometimes misunderstood each other, who often disagreed and who, at times, held similar positions for very different reasons. What they cobbled together as relationship, political culture and a Constitution has had far-reaching consequences.
Chapter 3 looks closely at the ways religious groups influenced the negotiations about a future place for religion. It explores political parties perspectives on religion and the way these were particularly influenced by an ecumenical interfaith movement. The chapter tracks the beginning of negotiations and the drafting of a right to religion. I show that almost everyone at the negotiations thought that religion was important and acknowledged its place in the lives of most South Africans. Turning that consensus into a legal framework raised interesting questions about conscience and community and about what sort of place religion should occupy in the public and schools, hospitals and prisons.
Chapter 4 looks more closely at the story of how traditional leaders - many of whom were in precarious situations in homelands in the 1980s - came to be in a position to ensure that traditional leadership and customary law were recognised in a postapartheid dispensation. How that happened turns on the relationships between the African National Congress (ANC) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), both inside and outside the negotiating chambers. And it is a story of intergenerational conflict and aspirations to either succession or the making of a single unified polity after apartheid. With all its twists and turns, I suggest that the new government s relationship with traditional authority can be understood as a failed attempt at secularisation. However we understand its genesis, it is true that the result is multiple and ambivalent forms of government and administration, particularly at local level.
Chapter 5 explores the dimension of secularism concerned with how a state founds its authority. The chapter traces an evangelical Christian story of transition that includes race reconciliation on the one hand and, on the other, an attempt to preserve socially conservative sexual morality, a moral majoritarian interpretation of the Constitution and recognition of God s sovereignty over the nation. This went hand in hand with the promotion by traditional leaders and the white right of strong cultural pluralism. Against this, the process of negotiation and the founding of the new nation were largely secular in terms of rituals, the valorisation of law itself and nationalism.
Chapter 6 does a slightly different job. The negotiations anticipated an idealised future for which many people were preparing. The chapter traces some of the ways in which the Constitution and the settlements that were made during the negotiations have fared in the past two decades. Taking stock of the social, economic and political fate of postapartheid South Africa,