THINKING SECULARISM FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Abstract

This project began with a few simple questions. Is contemporary South Africa secular? What does it mean to be secular? What kind of secularism does it have? I asked them because religion has been so saturated by politics in South Africa's past, and politics so saturated by religion. The historical importance of religion and tradition to South African governance raises the question of whether and how it is possible for a new postapartheid state to found itself without their authority. Why did the churches give up so much of their political role in the transition? How can we think about tradition and the customary in relation to secularism? How can we not? Why do we have traditional leaders and customary law in a dispensation of democratic secular liberal constitutionalism? These are the questions that animate this book. The African National Congress (ANC), religious groups, press and political commentators all say that democratic South Africa is secular. But religion and things that look a lot like religion continue to be important and visible in South African politics and public life. Traditional leaders wield state power in rural areas, sangomas and praise singers are found at inaugurations and public rallies, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) employed overt theology. Statecraft includes a ‘Moral Regeneration Movement’ that calls on religious partners, and Jacob Zuma likens himself to Jesus. With the exception of the TRC, very little of this has been adequately researched or conceptualised. So what is to be made of the public and political presence of religion and tradition in postapartheid South Africa? And what is secularism if it is not the absence of religion? Charles Taylor (2007:15) said about the study of secularism: ‘It seems obvious before you start thinking about it, but as soon as you do, all sorts of problems arise.’ This is true. ‘What is secularism?’ has to be the biggest problem. The forms and attributes of political secularism have often been settled at times of political transition and state formation. There is a double meaning in the title of this book, The State of Secularism . On the one hand, secularism is a mode of state. The second meaning opens an evaluation of the state secularism is in today.