Abstract
The chapter draws attention to the context of church–state relations in post-apartheid South Africa, where Somalis have deployed a religious community governance similar to that of South African Indian Muslims. Religion and governance will be at the centre of the analysis of a Muslim moral economy led by Muslim NGOs and also by the Muslim Amal plaza in Johannesburg. Sadouni demonstrates how urban Islam is able to transcend xenophobic sentiments against foreigners, and especially Somalis in Mayfair, and compete with state governance. Religion and diaspora can represent important and legitimate incentives for building market-based policies in an urban religious community which can supplement or even replace state policies and provide better security.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Farid Esack and Ebrahim Rasool from the Call of Islam were also senior members of the UDF . Rasool later became premier of the Western Cape and will lead the next ANC election campaign in the province in 2019.
- 3.
Dennis Cruywagen states in his book that religious representatives such as Father Alan Hughes of the Anglican Church and Imam Abdurrahman Bassier, whose mosque was in Bo-Kaap in Cape Town, were among those who visited the political prisoners on Robben Island. Nelson Mandela , Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Govan Mbeki and Denis Goldberg were imprisoned on the island after the Rivonia trial (see Cruywagen 2016).
- 4.
In post-apartheid South Africa, Mandela was mostly acclaimed as a miracle-worker and came to “personify the ‘new’ South Africa” (see Posel 2014).
- 5.
The preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (1996) stipulates that “we, the people of South Africa […] adopt this Constitution as the supreme law of the Republic so as to heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights”.
- 6.
Reverend Freek Swanepoel of the DRC asserted that “Mr Mandela was a fine strategist […] By using the church as agent for reconciliation, which is her calling, he succeeded in promoting peace in a country on the brink of civil war” (Cruywagen 2016: 144).
- 7.
It seems that the NRLF , established by Nelson Mandela in 1998, was a unique organisation that met with cabinet ministers, local governments and the president of South Africa.
- 8.
The NRLF was dissolved in 2011 after the merger with the National Interfaith Leaders Council (NILC). The new interfaith non-profit organisation is the National Interfaith Council of South Africa (NICSA).
- 9.
Dolbeau is quoting Robert von Lucius’ expression here (Dolbeau 1999).
- 10.
I thank Archbishop Serafim Kykotis, Metropolitan of Johannesburg and Pretoria, for access to the minutes of the NRLF , of which he was a member.
- 11.
Mandela , in his response to a speech delivered by Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the tenth anniversary of the WCRP at the time of the first democratic elections of 1994, highlighted the role of religion in post-apartheid South Africa: “I wish however to emphasise the role of the religious community in reconstruction and development. On the one hand, we view it as only natural that the partnership against apartheid should mature into one of the betterment of the life of all South Africans, especially the poor. On the other hand, your prophetic voice is crucial in reinforcing the moral fibre of the new democratic state—be it in the application of human rights statutes, or the integrity of its financial and other practices. In other words, the new democracy needs you as an active participant in its consolidation, as a critical watchdog and as a crucial part of its spiritual guide. To us, the individual religious groups and the interfaith movement that South Africa has forged over the years will always be our source of strength ” (Mandela 1994).
- 12.
Chapter 1 (“Founding Provisions”) of the South African Constitution stipulates in its section “Languages”: “A Pan South African Language Board established by national legislation must (b) promote and ensure respect for—(ii) Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit and other languages used for religious purposes in South Africa.”
- 13.
See the 2012 South African film Material, which is set in the Muslim Indian enclave of Fordsburg .
- 14.
The international community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which has seventeen sustainable development goals, at the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015.
- 15.
Islamic NGOs seem to have four sources of income: states and large, pan-Islamic organisations (such as the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the World Islamic League); Islamic banks; their own marketing of their charitable activities to the larger Muslim public; and, more shadowy networks within the “Islamic international” (see Ghandour 2002; Clarke and Tittensor 2014).
- 16.
The MYM’s ideas circulated within different ethnic communities in the country (Malay, Indian, black African) and adapted to the specific context of Islam as a minority religion in the particularly discriminatory political context of apartheid (Tayob 1995).
- 17.
The Gift of the Givers recognises the influence of this Sufi tariqa by quoting Sheikh Al-Jerrahi on its website: “Well, you have kept the fast and learned what it means to go hungry. Now leave your fire unlit for a day and find out what it is like for those who have no heat in their homes! Go without shoes some day; tread barefoot in the snow and ice to find out how it is for those who always go barefoot through the mud and slush! Leave your windows open one day and see what it is like to live in a house without them! Go out in the street without your coat some cold winter’s day, just to see how it is for those who have no coats at all! As long as your stomach is full, you will know nothing about the condition of the starving; as long as your house is warm, you will not understand the actions of those who live without heat; as long as your own feet are well shod, as long as you have thick clothes to wear, you will have no idea of the state of those who go barefoot and unclad. Satisfy the hungry, so that Paradise may love you. Clothe the naked, so that you may not be bare on the coming day of Resurrection, when all the rest are naked. Become aware of the condition of all those paupers and orphans, for your own wife may become a pauper and your own children orphans. The wheel of fate turns. None of us knows what is to be: what great wealth may be doomed to extinction or how many, now despised, may rise to heights of dignity and honour. From Irshad Wisdom of a Sufi Master, p. 233, by Sheikh Al-Jerrahi. Retrieved from www.giftofthegivers.co.za.
- 18.
We can also add the importance of benefits received by NGOs and community-based organisations through the Non-Profit Organisations Act of 1997.
- 19.
However, in the past, the Gift of the Givers entered the political field when its director, Imtiaz Sooliman, created the Africa Muslim Party to campaign in the 1994 elections.
- 20.
Academic Adam Habib considers three sectors of the civil society which established different relationships with the democratic state: NGOs , survivalist agencies and social movements. The particularity of NGOs is that they “have entered into partnerships with, and/or subcontracted to, the state” (Habib 2013: 158).
- 21.
- 22.
Jean Comaroff underlines the power of religion: “The force of faith goes well beyond the sacred. Under the sway of neo-liberal orthodoxy, states in many places have relinquished major responsibility for schooling, health and welfare for the social reproduction of their citizens. Religious organisations have enthusiastically resumed this role, a role they themselves often never fully lost, even to the grand disciplinary institutions of the Keynesian state” (Comaroff 2006).
- 23.
It is worth mentioning that during the tragic events of May 2008 marked by xenophobic attacks against foreigners, Muslim NGOs like the Gift of the Givers intervened to provide shelter and food for refugees in the cities. Islamic organisations were not the only ones present on the humanitarian field but according to news reports the majority of South African humanitarian agencies providing aid to refugees were Muslim NGOs .
- 24.
In October 2009, people in the townships and informal settlements took to the streets in violent protests over service delivery failures and conveyed their concerns about corruption and accountability. See The Star newspaper, “Fed Up, Furious … and All Fired Up”, 26 October 2009.
- 25.
Fieldnotes based on participant observation in a refugee camp in Pretoria in August 2008.
- 26.
South African Muslim minorities consider that the democratic dispensation has to be respected by all including Muslims. This is what the MJC had to say after its president visited the Muslim Verulam community in Durban following the killing of one of its members and the desecration of a Shiite mosque. According to media reports, he considered it “unacceptable within a pluralistic society like South Africa, where freedom of association and belief is guaranteed by the constitution”. Retrieved from http://mjc.org.za/2018/05/15/mjc-visits-imam-hussein-as-mosque-in-durban/.
- 27.
As Helga Leitner has emphasised, “migrant transnationalism is often a compensatory mechanism for such negative experiences as structural and ‘everyday’ discrimination” (Leitner 2008: 48).
- 28.
Interview with N., 29 November 2007, Mayfair .
- 29.
A UN passport or South African citizenship is a principal consideration for both Somali women and men as it represents a freedom to travel.
- 30.
Ten years ago, Somali women in charge of running Somali hostels divided into two-bedroom flats had to pay high rents amounting to 5000–6000 rands in Mayfair .
- 31.
Interview with A., June 2007, Mayfair .
- 32.
Interview with A., 10 0ctober 2007, Mayfair .
- 33.
Pnina Werbner has coined the concept of “complex diasporas ” in order to understand the common regional identity shared by South Asians of different nationalities. The South Asian identity includes five nation-states (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal) and at least five world religions (Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Christianity) (Werbner 2004).
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Sadouni, S. (2019). Religious Community Governance in Solidarity. In: Muslims in Southern Africa. Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-46708-9_5
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