Why do you hate me so much? An exploration of religious freedom from the perspective of African religion(s)

Abstract

The advent of the 1996 constitution and the promotion of freedom of religion gave space to previously discriminated religious traditions to flourish. There have been a number of revivals of aspects of African Traditional Religion. The Bill of Rights guarantees Religious Freedom but tends to limit it to Freedom of belief. People have every right to believe and practice as long as their practice is in line with the law. This paper is a reflection on the difficulties posed by the notion of Religious Freedom as contained in the 1996 South African constitution for practitioners of African Indigenous Religions and other minority religions. In a case that captured the imagination of the legal fraternity, Gareth Prince, a practicing Rastafarian, was prevented from joining the Bar of the Western Cape because of a prior conviction of being caught in possession of dagga, an illegal substance. He argued that he used cannabis as part of his religious observance. Justice Ngcobo, in his judgement dismissing the case, made it very clear that ‘the right to freedom of religion is not absolute’. In other words, religious practices need to fall within the provisions of the law of the land. At the core of our argument is that the intellectual and cultural resources that were mobilised in writing the South African constitution failed to reflect on the religious practices of indigenous people and other minority religions.

Gender struggles in contemporary South Africa: examining african women’s traditional spiritual roles in isiXhosa culture.

“…Africa had and still has women who are amagqirha / izangoma (divine healers) whose status is on the same level or above that of men and vice versa, depending on how spiritually gifted an individual is. In emphasizing the significance of spirituality in folks' welfare, (Ver Beek, 2005;Mbiti, 1970;Chengu, 2015;Mndende (2007); Masondo, 2017) demonstrate how third forces which side-line spirituality affect the human and that this marginalization robs people of the chance to determine the value systems and priorities. They infer that this act is antidevelopmental.…”

“…They infer that this act is antidevelopmental. Switzer (1993) as cited Camaroff & Camaroff (1989) in Masondo (2017), explicates that instilling complexes of inferiority among Africans was part of the process of othering African indigenous knowledge systems.…”

“…" Kurtz & Ketcham etal In positing an undiscussed and unarticulated metaphysical basis of sexism imposed on women in Africa, Ukhun (2003) contends that from an African perspective -the idea of existence of spirits is not an illusion as the universal point view or metaphysics suggests. Fairly, people of African descent feel the presence of the spirits in their lives and thus, it is evident that how they conceive of the worldview (Ukhun, 2003;Ver Beek, 2000;Masondo, 2017) is informed by the belief in the deeds of spirits. Ver Beek (2000) posits that "spirituality is central to many of the daily decisions people in the `South' make about their own and their community's development, including that of whether or not to participate in risky but potentially beneficial social action".…”