The task of urban black public theology

Vuyani S Vellem

doi:10.4102/hts.v70i3.2728

Abstract

Twenty years after the demise of apartheid, a typical South African city remains bifurcated. The mushrooming of squatter camps, mekhukhu, in our big cities, symptomises a history that defined the majority of South Africans as sojourners and vagabonds in their motherland. Destined to die in the rural reserves after the extraction of their labour and confined to ‘locations’ in-between the ‘city’ and the rural ‘home’, black experience in the post-1994 city continues to be a manifestation of a life disintegrated from an integrated vision of ikhaya (oikos) − household − and urban life in democratic South Africa. By critiquing the policies of the post-1994 government on urbanisation, the article argues that for inclusion in the city, the colonial and apartheid polis is not adequate redress to the black experience of urbanisation in South Africa. The quest for the transformation of a city in order for an integrated city in the post-1994 South Africa to be achieved is ostensibly the best starting point, this article argues.

Highlights

The main purpose of this article is to critique the vision for urbanisation in post-1994 South Africa
The task of urban black public theology is in the main to unmask urbanisation models that conceal the mixture of slavery, cheap labour and theologised distortions of human movement in South Africa and on the globe
Within the context of living death in mekhukhu and ekassie, black urban public theology must continue to search unabated for metamorphosed, home-made resources of language and symbols that the poor employ against alienating forces of urbanisation and the displacement of life-giving sources

Summary

Introduction

The main purpose of this article is to critique the vision for urbanisation in post-1994 South Africa. This critique is conducted within the context of un-reconciled policy principles of urbanisation that subjugate the movement of the poor to development policies without dealing with urbanisation itself as a reality. Urbanisation in South Africa is fraught with slavery, cheap and docile labour, and racism, all theologised to alienate black Africans from their land. There is a sense at theoretical level that the metaphysics of urbanisation become important for black critical engagement. The article elects the township experience as the interlocutor of urban black public theology and concludes with a brief and tentative suggestion of what its task could be in post-1994 South Africa.

Objectives

Conclusion