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It is indisputable that Black Theology of Liberation (BTL) intentionally un-thinks the West. BTL has its own independent conceptual and theoretical foundations and can hold without the West if it rejects the architecture of Western knowledge as a final norm for life. This, however, is a spiritual matter which the article argues. The historical arrest of the progression of liberative logic and its promises might be self-inflicted by rearticulating and reinterpreting liberation strong thought. At a time when neofascism, which is virtually an open display of psychological and ideological confusion, racism, classism, sensibilities of integralism and gender violence, having become rife, liberal democracy is arguably in crisis today. BTL has to move beyond rethinking and repeating its tried and tested ways of response to black pain caused by racism and colonialism. Un-thinking the West is not only cognitive but also spiritual. Umoya, the spirit of life, the article argues, to un-think the West, constitutes inter alia, the rejection of Hellenocentric concepts as a starting point of knowledge. Umoya should reject the self-serving periodisation of history centred on Europe, dualistic obfuscating secularism and willingness by black to occlude their knowledge systems. Without this, the article argues, the lethargic sleep, the mocking laughter of the West at the self-wounding black African remains a syndrome that arrests the translation of liberation knowledge from history. ; The collection entitled 'Spirit rising: tracing movements of justice', forms part of the 'Faith in the City' research project, hosted by the Centre for Contextual Ministry in the Faculty of Theology, University of Pretoria. Some of the articles were papers presented at the Biennial Consultation on Urban Ministry, hosted by the Institute for Urban Ministry, in collaboration with other organizations, from 17-20 August 2016. The theme of this Consultation was '#We must rise: healers - dreamers – jesters'. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2018 ; Dogmatics and ...

In 'traditional' liberation theological discourse, especially the Latin American strand, the concept of development, desarrollismo, that is developmentalism, has been severely critiqued. In recent times, the interpretation of development shifted to a number of models, one of which has been the view of development as freedom, associated with Amartya Sen's 'capabilities theory'. While the capabilities theory ostensibly comes closer to the goals of the liberation paradigm in general, this article seeks to critically explore in dialogue with this theory of capabilities assumptions and implications of the concept of development for our national democratic revolution. A number of service delivery strikes in our land, with many poor people expecting government to 'deliver' for them, might suggest among other things that the state does 'development' for people, hence the designation of the post-1994 South African state as a 'developmental state'. This article argues that, at foundational level, development understood as liberation could help alter the assumptions that held the national democratic revolution back. ; This article forms part of the special collection on 'Engaging development: Contributions to a critical theological and religious debate' in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies Volume 72, Issue 4, 2016. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2017 ; Dogmatics and Christian Ethics

The unprecedented cultural consciousness after decades of black cultural suppression in the South African public life since the 1990s summons us to the need to harness African ecclesiopolitical symbols in public life. This task is executed at a time when the notions of inter alia, spirituality and Imvuselelo are at the heart of the combustion chambers of our public and political life. Imvuselelo is a thermometer of decolonialist rebellion – the militant spirituality linked with Tiyo Soga – and is a self-combustion escape route in instances of black African epistemicide and violence. The heuristic device of iziko (fireplace) is employed to illuminate and locate the reestablishment and anamnestic praxis of protological life-giving foundations of spirituality in the African universe in our interpretation of Imvuselelo. The notion of imvuselelo is illuminated through iziko to debunk the incompatibilities, disharmonies, incongruences and conflagrations of virtual spirituality in its capture and domestication of the resources of the downtrodden. ; http://www.hts.org.za ; am2017 ; Dogmatics and Christian Ethics

Paleng ya rona batho ba batsho, tumelo ya boKreste e fihlile lefatsheng la rona la Afrika Borwa mmoho le dikgoka tsa ditjhaba tsa boPhirima. BoKreste bo fihlile ka nako ya dintwa tseo mohopolo wa tsona e neng e le ho hapa lefatshe la, batho ba batsho. Ka mantswe amang, rona batho ba batsho, re ile ra qetella re le setjhaba se ileng sa hlolwa, mme lefatshe la rona la nkuwa ka dikgoka. Ka hare ho dikgoka tsena, ho ne ho dutse tumelo ya boKreste. Makgowa a ile are: 'A re kwaleng mahlo re rapeleng, rona ra kwala mahlo, mme ha re qeta hore Amen, re bula mahlo, ra fumana lefatshe le nkuwe matsohong a rona ho setse Bibele.' Re ile ra sala le Bibele eo ka yona re lekileng dilemong tse fitileng ho lwana ntwa ya topollo, kapa tokoloho hofihlela selemong sa 1994. Le ha re ile ra fumana tokoloho ka selemo seo, hare so ka re lokoloha ho tsa moruo. E kaba sena se bolela eng mabapi le tumelo ya rona ya boKreste? Segolweng sena re leka ho araba potso ena. Tumelo ke eng ho batho ba sa lokolohang moruong wa naha ya bona? Re lekola pale ya boKreste, tumelo ya batho le maemo a kereke ntlheng ya ho tadimana le tokoloho ka tumelo. ; In our history from a black perspective, Christianity arrived through violent conquest from the west. Evidentially, this faith coincided with wars of dispossession and the ultimate defeat of black Africans. It is difficult to separate the violent defeat of black Africans from the arrival of Christian faith. This well-known statement within the circles of black Theology of liberation: When the white man arrived in our land he said, 'let us pray and after prayer, when we opened our eyes, our land was taken and only the Bible was left in our hands,' captures the black sentiment of this history. Ironically, it was this Bible that black Africans used to wage their struggle for liberation up to the demise of apartheid in 1994. Nonetheless, political liberation is not enough as the struggle for economic liberation continue in South Africa post 1994. In the light of this history, what then is the role of faith ...

Twenty years after the demise of apartheid, a typical South African city remains bifurcated. The mushrooming of squatter camps, mekhukhu, in our big cities, symptomises a history that defined the majority of South Africans as sojourners and vagabonds in their motherland. Destined to die in the rural reserves after the extraction of their labour and confined to 'locations' in-between the 'city' and the rural 'home', black experience in the post-1994 city continues to be a manifestation of a life disintegrated from an integrated vision of ikhaya (oikos) − household − and urban life in democratic South Africa. By critiquing the policies of the post- 1994 government on urbanisation, the article argues that for inclusion in the city, the colonial and apartheid polis is not adequate redress to the black experience of urbanisation in South Africa. The quest for the transformation of a city in order for an integrated city in the post-1994 South Africa to be achieved is ostensibly the best starting point, this article argues. ; This article forms part of the special collection on 'Doing urban public theology in South Africa: Visions, approaches, themes and practices towards a new agenda' ; http://www.hts.org.za ; tm2015

The 'Protest' and 'Confessing' Models in the streams of Black Theology of liberation provide a creative link between the Prophetic Theology in the Kairos document (KD) and the Black Theology of liberation. Launched in a distinct moment of history – an 'opportune moment' – the KD propagated the best responses among some and the worst among others as a rapturous critique of State and Church theologies. In this article, I argued that the KD, which remains a version of liberation theology par excellence, offers a methodology that is still appropriate to our democratisation processes in South Africa. The KD is the product of a theology that did not only expand the contours of traditional theology, but also understood confession as a political praxis. Thus, the interest of the poor should still mitigate forth-telling in our democratic vision in dialogue inspired by the alluring prophetic vision of an alternative community based on the principles of the reign of God.