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| Title: | 'Maybe freedom will come from you': Christian prophecies and rumors in the development of rural resistance in South Africa, 1948-1961 |
| Author: | Redding, Sean |
| Year: | 2010 |
| Periodical: | Journal of Religion in Africa (ISSN 0022-4200) |
| Volume: | 40 |
| Issue: | 2 |
| Pages: | 163-191 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | South Africa Transkei |
| Subjects: | rebellions prophets Christianity Pondo 1950-1959 1960-1969 |
| External link: | https://doi.org/10.1163/157006610X502610 |
| Abstract: | In South Africa, Christian teachings and texts informed African political activity in the 1950s and 1960s, particularly in the rural areas, and rumours predicting both real revolts and fantastic interventions were common. While recent scholarship concerning supernatural beliefs in African political life often analyses the impact of fears about witchcraft or faith in the ancestors, Christianity of various types was also a significant influence on people's actions. This paper analyses the historical background to the revolt against apartheid policies that developed in the Transkeian region of the Eastern Cape of South Africa in the late 1950s and early 1960s - often called the Mpondo Revolt - and pays special attention to the role of Christian influences. Christianity was consequential both in terms of how people understood their grievances and also in the kinds of predictions they made about their political future. Rumours and religion combined with material grievances to create a prophetic moment in which rebellion became a moral choice. Bibliogr., notes, ref., sum. [Journal abstract] |
