Identity and Migration in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Retelling of the Christian Open-Ended Narrative as Service to the Church and the World

Abstract

Immigration has been the single most important socio-religious phenomenon that brought the question of identity within the center of the religious and social debate within post-Apartheid South Africa.While race remains an important factor for identity formation, the xenophobic attacks on immigrants from other parts of Africa has overshadowed racism. This article seeks to engage critically with the notions of identity and immigration. The question that I will explore is how the church can respond to the quest for identity that shapes the social welfare and political activity of the South African society and immigrants in post-Apartheid South Africa. This question falls within diakonia as mission activity of the church. I will argue that a open-ended narrative approach to identity formation provides the space for difference/differance to inform, form and transform identity. The four dimensions of open-ended narrative approach, community, tradition, communication and experience are reinterpreted for identity forming.