This article relates the legal status of Mozambicans in South Africa from 1985 onwards to key findings of a demographic census taken in 1992, an environmental health survey conducted in 1993, and in-depth fieldwork in some of the surveyed settlements in 1995. The case study area on the border with Mozambique is typical of South Africa's rural former homelands, with the exception that it has a large and long-standing refugee population. The environmental health indicators for refugees are considerably worse than for their hosts, and in-depth fieldwork suggests that this can be attributed to their legal and political vulnerability. This raises issues for South Africa's Reconstruction and Development Program, as well as conceptual challenges for promoters of human rights.

Religious pluralism has characterized societies since time immemorial and has been one of the sources of conflict in many societies. This article compares how religious pluralism was handled in intertestamental Palestine and the manner it is managed in post-apartheid South Africa. The study used academic literature which applied the Apocrypha to describe the religious context of Palestine between 336 BC and 63 BC. The themes that emerged from this analysis were then used to source academic literature that describes the religious context of South Africa from 1994 to 2021. This process led to the synthesis of the similarities and differences of the two contexts. The findings latently reveal the contribution of the Apocrypha to theological reflection while simultaneously showing that the Roman Empire’s violent attempts to undermine religious pluralism in intertestamental Palestine bred counterviolence. The paper further reveals that post-apartheid South Africa’s use of legal instruments to promote religious pluralism seems to contribute to the optimization of religious freedom and peaceful co-existence. These findings are likely to contribute to the discourse of religious pluralism, interfaith dialogue, and intercultural communications. Keywords: Hellenism, Apocrypha, Religious Pluralism, Democracy

The promotion of religious freedom and the general pervasion of pluralism across the globe necessitate the need for Christians to review how they evangelize among people of other faiths and those of no faith. One of the mechanisms that has gained prominence in this regard is the promotion of the concept of interfaith dialogue. This article examines areas of convergence between this concept and evangelism through literature study. Following an interpretive approach, the study determined that both concepts have a distinctive but complementary relationship, both promote mutual respect and consider intercultural communication and contextualization. Written from the Christian faith perspective, the article argues that both evangelism and interfaith dialogue could be used by Christians to further God’s mission in contemporary society. As interfaith dialogue promotes neighborliness, the article recommends that it should be embraced by adherents of all faiths. As it has been written from the perspective of the Christian faith, it further recommends that while evangelical witness should be done with respect for other faiths, evangelizers should not neglect the worth of the commission received from Jesus Christ. These recommendations and those from empirical studies conducted on this topic should be tested through further studies in various contexts. This paper seeks to contribute to existing knowledge in interfaith dialogue and evangelism in the sub-discipline of missiology. Keywords: Evangelism, Interfaith Dialogue, Ecumenical Movement, Mission

The coronavirus pandemic has affected almost every aspect of human life across the entire globe, including tertiary education. This interdisciplinary study explored how undergraduate students in tertiary institutions located in Gauteng Province of South Africa experienced and coped with the effects of the pandemic between the 2020 to 2022 academic years. The article used the Rites of Passage Concept to interpret how they transitioned from in-person learning to online learning, and from the latter to hybrid learning. It then used psychological concepts of self-efficacy, self-regulation and self-control to illustrate how they motivated themselves to continue pursuing their academic studies. To conduct this phenomenological study, the researchers used participatory observation and in-depth interviews to collect data over a three-year period. They then employed concepts from anthropology and psychology to interpret the students’ experience. While recognizing its limited scope, the researchers argued that the study was able to illustrate the symbiotic relationship between anthropology and psychology in social scientific research. It is their hope that the findings of this study contribute to existing scholarship in the field of humanities concerning stressors and coping strategies. Keywords: Interdisciplinary Study, COVID-19, Concept of the Rites of Passage, Coping Strategies

This paper presents a critical review of the book titled An African Background to the Old Testament written by Rev. Dr. Isaac Boaheng. The purpose of this review is to assess how this book has achieved its objective of enhancing African readers’ contextual reading of the Old Testament(OT). From my perspective as a graduate student in Practical Theology, I am of the opinion that the book has achieved this purpose. Therefore, this review serves to sustain this assertion. The review starts by presenting the book’s overview commencing from the Foreword and ending with Chapter 7. I then conclude the review with a brief evaluation of the extent to which the book has achieved its stated and implied goal(s) followed by some recommendations.