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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: Resistance and Abuse in the Life of Solomon Lion (1908-1987) |
Author: | Murray, Colin |
Year: | 1999 |
Periodical: | Journal of Religion in Africa |
Volume: | 29 |
Issue: | 3 |
Pages: | 341-386 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | African Independent Churches biographies (form) Religion and Witchcraft Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) |
About person: | Solomon Lion (1908-1987) |
External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/1581529 |
Abstract: | From 1938 until 1987, Solomon Lion (1908-1987) was the leader of the Zion Apostolic Faith Mission (ZAFM), which has its headquarters in a large village in the North-West Province of South Africa. He was simultaneously revered as 'god and martyr' by numerous followers who sought redemption outside the framework of constraint imposed on their lives by the apartheid regime. This paper discusses two core elements of Solomon Lion's behaviour and reputation. First, he spent much of his adult life locked in mutually abrasive antagonism with the agents of the apartheid State, and later, in the 1970s, with its surrogate oppressors such as Lucas Mangope, the Chief Minister of Bophuthatswana. Second, he was notorious for his authoritarian style of leadership and for his habits of physical and sexual abuse. For these reasons, his domestic regime was also fraught with conflict, often violent. The paper explores the links between the two core elements of Solomon Lion's behaviour and his reputation and interprets them in both structural and cultural terms. Notes, ref. |