The central thesis of this article is that while apology and forgiveness are vital for dealing with a violent past, there is a need to critically transform the sociopolitical epistemic subjectivities that underpin a wrongdoing. These include political discourses, narratives, ideas and ideologies that justified the wrongdoing in the first place and are thus its bedrock. This is against the understanding that brutality and violence are sustained by particular epistemologies, logics and reasonings. Failure to bring about their transformation results in not stopping the repetition of brutality and not realizing sustainable reconciliation, as well as stifling key aspects of dealing with the past, such as truth seeking, truth telling, justice and accountability. By drawing on the state-sponsored massacres in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s – the Gukurahundi massacres – this article argues that current calls for, and implementations of, apologies and forgiveness are often undertaken without considering the need to transform the epistemic bedrock of conflict and violence which engenders apology and forgiveness. This lack of focus on transformation makes apology and forgiveness susceptible to abuse or underutilization, and thus impotent in facilitating sustainable reconciliation. The article emphasizes the need to transform the cognitive and epistemic subjectivities underpinning wrongdoing, thus making a case for transformative apology and forgiveness.

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In the post-colonial history of presidential aspirants in Zimbabwe, no politician has been as overtly religious as Nelson Chamisa, the current leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Chamisa identifies himself as a politician and a pastor whose politics are guided by his Christian faith. However, he took religious rhetoric to mobilise support to an unprecedented level when he explicitly blurred the boundaries between functions by calling for and leading a week of fasting and prayer from 29th July to 4th August 2019. Through a digital ethnography of Chamisa’s Twitter posts and the direct responses to them posted by members of the public during the fasting and prayer week, this article investigates how this call was received by those who responded on Twitter and what this tells us about Zimbabweans’ perceptions of religious politics, that is, the deployment of dominant religions like Christianity in politics.

The dominant narrative in the study of religion in Africa is that African indigenous religions are non-violent, peaceful and seek to promote healing and integration. In this paradigm, it is militant missionary religions such as Islam and Christianity that promote violence. Such an approach misses the key learning that no religion is violent in and of itself: only the determination of individuals and groups acting in the name of a particular religion is relevant as to whether/the extent to which a religion can be appropriated and deployed to perpetrate violence. This article explores the deployment of a song, 'Zimbabwe Ndeye Ropa Ramadzibaba' to justify 'sacred violence' to 'defend Zimbabwe against witches/enemies'. The central research question is: How is the song, 'Zimbabwe Ndeye Ropa…' appropriated and deployed to sacralise violence in Zimbabwean politics? The article describes the song and analyses some of the contexts in which the song has been strategically performed. The study seeks to underscore the manipulation of indigenous spirituality in justifying violence. Theoretically, the study challenges the naïve claims that indigenous religions are 'pure and upright' in relation to violence.

This article argues that as humanity is now changing the composition of the atmosphere at a rate that is very exceptional on the geological time scale, resulting in global warming, humans must deal with climate change holistically, including the often overlooked religion factor. Human‐caused climate change has resulted primarily from changes in the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also from changes in small particles (aerosols), as well as from changes in land use. In Africa, the entire relationship between humans and nature, including activities such as land use, has deep religious and spiritual underpinnings. In general, religion is central to many of the decisions people make about their own communities’ development. Hence, this contribution examines religion as a factor that can be tapped into to mitigate negative effects of climate change, discussing climate change and religion in the context of development practice. It argues that some of the difficulties encountered in development, including efforts to reverse global warming in Africa, directly speak to the relegation of African cosmovision and conversely of the need to adopt new epistemologies, concepts, and models that take religion into consideration.