Original Research - Special Collection: Urban Public Theology in South Africa

The task of urban black public theology

Vuyani S. Vellem
HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies | Vol 70, No 3 | a2728 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v70i3.2728 | © 2014 Vuyani S. Vellem | This work is licensed under CC Attribution 4.0
Submitted: 16 May 2014 | Published: 20 November 2014

About the author(s)

Vuyani S. Vellem, Department of Dogmatics and Christian Ethics, Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria, South Africa, South Africa

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.

Keywords

urban black theology; South Africa; democratic

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