Racism, South Africa and Logocentrism

South Africa:
Religion, Race and Colonialism in
a Shifting Dialectic of Binary Opposites


The colonial legacy of apartheid in South Africa left a deep imprint on the history of human rights and social justice. Moreover, the wound of apartheid on the people of South Africa is profoundly shaped by this legacy of historical violence. While it is beginning to show signs of healing, the multiple scars of apartheid show their roots in the depths of the trauma recounted in the aftermath of post-apartheid South Africa. In order to understand this trauma it is important to listen, and reflect on what is being said. After all, it seems, as Freud proved, speaking, and therefore writing, is the first point of departure in the healing of the internal psychic fracture of a deeply embedded wound. While a discussion of the traumatic events of apartheid appears to be an overwhelming task, it is at least important to situate the context of the events of the trauma. Therefore, in order to investigate the remains of a legacy that has so deeply impacted the people of South Africa, it is therefore integral to contextualize, to give notes to, and ultimately try to present an understanding of the significance of these remains, even if this discussion is limited in scope.  
In this paper, I am particularly interested in discussing the historical and colonial developments of the categories of religion and race in the context of South Africa. I am especially concerned with its implications in the post-apartheid era. This presents a case study in order to begin thinking about the relationship between these categories in a way that demonstrates how they represent critical issues for the study of religion. The thesis developed throughout this paper is that while the categories of religion and race in the context of South Africa are constructed within the broader history of colonialism, the reconstruction of these categories in various ways, especially in ways that challenge the processes of colonialism and imperialism, represents a movement towards the dismantlement of the binary oppositions that have structured these categories in the colonial and post-colonial experience. However, even within the context of South Africa, which is often considered to be a bastion of hope and multiculturalism (Tamarkin 148), it appears that the relationship between race and religion remains an area of deep political and religious contestation (Tamarkin 163). As Tamarkin’s study of South African multiculturalism points towards, this is especially the  case of the Lemba people, a group of “black Jews” on the margins of South African society, who have been working towards their recognition as a politically distinct community (163). Hence, I believe that it is important to highlight how the relationship between colonialism and apartheid reflects the variety of religious, social, cultural and political challenges to identity in a shifting and changing post-colonial context. I will begin with a discussion of method and theory in the study of religion, and then move to a reflection on Jacques Derrida’s essay, “Racism’s Last Word,” that reflects on the relationship between the categories of religion and race, in order to show that both of these categories are deeply intertwined and constructed in the social, cultural and political realities of South Africa.    
The relationship between the categories of race and religion presents a critical perspective to the development of theory and method in the field of religious studies (Lynch 284). According to Lynch, these categories are understood as socially constructed in the sense that they are “imposed and adopted by others” (284). Contemporary academics have often noted that, for example, in the past, the way in which scholars of religion approached religious difference often led to the imposition of a Christian framework in order to understand the religious perspective of the Other (Lynch 285). From a social constructivist point of view, this example is problematic because it presents the study of religion as a form of cross-cultural encounter that privileges the scholar of religion over the object of study in a hierarchical and often colonial way. Furthermore, the Christian understanding of religion in particular is considered to be an ineffective approach for conducting research (Lynch 284). Moreover, in the past, as evident in various colonial policies and political regimes, this has resulted in the implementation of racial and political categories to examine and effectively control the religion of the Other, especially as it is interpreted in terms of its difference from Christianity (Byrne 7). The implications of the effects of colonialism, imperialism and ethnocentrism challenges the notion in the study of religion that “religion” presents a unique category of intellectual analysis (sui generis). Indeed, religion is often a highly politically charged category, and is frequently enmeshed in a wide range of social, cultural, political, economic and environmental issues. Therefore, in order to think about the complexity of the categories of race and religion, I think it is useful to think about the way in which these categories have been constructed and used to create the conditions for colonial, racial and structural violence. I argue that this is highly important for the study of religion, as it connects to some of the most important issues of our times.
Social constructivism presents one example of a theoretical approach to the study of religion that effectively engages with these categories in a critical light. According to Lynch, social constructivism is a recent approach to theory and method in religion, and therefore represents an emerging area of academic inquiry (284). Moreover, the approach of social constructivism has contributed a significant framework for conducting research in religious studies (284). However, as Lynch states, while the idea of religion as a socially constructed category has contributed “new and important approaches to the study of religion, the precise nature of social construction is often underdeveloped” (285). As Lynch argues, academic research on the social construction of gender and race, in particular, provide “an opportunity to continue to develop critiques of the category of religion” (285). This perspective presents a well established theoretical framework, and conveys an important way of thinking about the intersectionality of the categories of race, gender, identity, religion and culture (Lynch 285, Haslanger 112).
According to Lynch, for Haslanger, whose theory on racial categories presents an important critique for the study of religion, social constructivism perceives social constructs not only as mental phenomena but also material, “actualized, embodied and imposed” (287). Indeed, the social construction of the categories of religion and race are implicated in a diversity of forms, both material and psychological, that condition and construct the perimeters of lived experience (Lynch 289). Moreover, the plurality of contexts that create racial and religious difference provides a significant point of reference for thinking about how people construct and frame their experiences, especially as they think about their lives in the contexts of religion and society (Bramadat 315-316). I use this example of social constructivism to point out the fact that the study of race presents a highly significant topic in the broader study religion, especially for thinking about the development of theory and method in the field of religious studies.
Of course, one thinker whose work perhaps might be considered in the context of social constructivism is Jacques Derrida, whose foundational methodological approach of deconstruction represents what I believe to be an absolutely necessary and pivotal stepping stone on the road towards developing a meaningful and clear approach to conducting research in the study of religion. Derrida’s legacy of thought often demonstrates how the history of philosophy was constructed and framed in a peculiar and particular way. In the history of the Western Enlightenment tradition, for instance, philosophy is often thought to be conveyed in terms of its neutrality towards the study of metaphysical reality (Derrida 6). Derrida, a philosopher who’s academic work is frequently located on the margins of scholarship, approaches the question of philosophy in an open and deliberate way in order to address the deeper questions of our time. In terms of my own understanding, Derrida has left a profound impact on the way I think about the study of religion, and reality in general, especially in terms of opening up topics to critical inquiry, not in the sense of attacking the subject matter, but rather, opening up the material to different possibilities of interpretation.    
Derrida’s essay, “Racism’s Last Word” is a brief but powerful reflection on the social, cultural, religious and political legacy of apartheid in South Africa. As a form of structural racism, apartheid represents a political system of racial segregation and cultural exclusion based on a colonial legacy of violence and state domination. The overarching goal of apartheid in South Africa was to effectively segregate the variety of multi-ethnic identities of South Africans, in order to prevent “non-whites” from affecting and attaining citizenship (Tamarkin 149). In this short essay, Derrida discusses apartheid in reference to an art exhibition hosted by the association of Artists of the World Against Apartheid in South Africa. The Exhibition brought together the work of a diverse group of artists in order to reflect on the social situation of South Africa under apartheid, and to envision the possibility of South Africa free at last from the oppressive yoke of the apartheid regime. The Exhibition began in Paris, and travelled across the world to convey the complexity and brutality of the apartheid regime to a global audience.
The Exhibition was the inspiration for “Racism’s Last Word”, and presented an artistic reflection on the future of racism in our world. As Pergnon-Ernest and Suara write, “the collection offered here will form the basis of a future museum against apartheid…The day will come—and our efforts are joined to those of the international community aiming to hasten the day’s arrival—when the museum thus constituted will be presented as a gift to the first free and democratic government of South Africa to be elected by universal suffrage” (“Art Against Apartheid Collection). The Exhibit was presented to Nelson Mandela, and is now a part of the general archives on apartheid in South Africa. The Exhibition represents the hopes of many; the inevitability of a future without apartheid. For Derrida, the artistic representation of the end of apartheid presents itself as the anticipation of a “memory in advance” (377). As Derrida writes, “that perhaps, is the time given for this Exhibition. At once urgent and untimely, it exposes itself to and takes a chance with time, it wagers and affirms beyond the wager” (377). While Derrida’s essay is a reflection on the optimism expressed by those who foresaw the impending demise of apartheid, he also focuses his essay on the “remains” of apartheid, which as I will discuss, persist to this day in often complex and surprising ways.      
Derrida’s essay presents a critical philosophical analysis of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Although apartheid officially ended in the 1990’s, by the 1980’s apartheid was beginning to decline and the institutional powers of the state of Pretoria were beginning to diminish. At the time of the Exhibition apartheid was nearing an end. It is in this context that Derrida focuses this essay on the notion of apartheid as a memory. As Derrida writes, “apartheid — may that remain the name from now on, the unique appellation for the ultimate racism in the world, the last of many” (377). Indeed, for Derrida, apartheid represents the “worst” of a systemic and totalized form of racial violence and state oppression. For Derrida, apartheid is “racism’s last word” because it signifies the last remaining ideological system wherein the political power of the state instituted racial segregation as a fundamental category of legal and political control. Moreover, the institutionalization of racism in South African society created the conditions for a highly repressive and oppressive form of state power. The social development of South African society revolved around the mobilization of racial categories to enforce the cultural hegemony of  the white minority settler population. In what ways is this analysis connected to the broader critique of logocentrism? Moreover, what are the remains of the social, cultural, political and religious racism of the apartheid system in South African society?
Indeed, what I find to be particularly interesting in Derrida’s essay is the role of religion in apartheid. Derrida discusses this in the middle of the essay, when he turns to the particular issues of South African administration and the establishment of the segregation laws during this period. As Derrida writes:
It is not enough to invent the prohibitions and to enrich everyday the most repressive legal apparatus in the world: in a breathless frenzy of obsessive juridical activity, two hundred laws and amendments were enacted during this period in twenty years (Prohibition of Mixed Marriage Act, 1949; Immorality Amendment Act [against interracial sexual relations]; Group Areas Act, Population Registry Act, 1950; Reservation of Separate Amenities [segregation in movie houses, post offices, swimming pools, on beaches, and so forth]; Motor Carrier Transportation Amendment Act, Extension of University Education Act [separate universities], 1955; segregation in athletic competition has already been widely publicized (383).
It is clear that from this passage that the creation of these laws effectively transformed the social and cultural boundaries of South African society into an official and formal system of segregation regulating every aspect of life. However, as Derrida notes, the social and cultural enforcement of these laws has roots in a particular religious understanding of the role of the state in the political formulation of the law (384). Derrida’s discusses this in terms of “theo-political”, ie, the emergence of state sovereignty based on an understanding of the state in relation to divine power (383).
According to Derrida, the merging of the theological with the political is reflected in the creation of the laws of segregation in South Africa, which as Derrida discusses are grounded in a particularly Calvinist understanding of God’s sovereignty as absolute power. As Derrida writes, “this law is also founded in a theology and these acts in scripture. For political power proceeds from God. It therefore remains indivisible” (383). In the context of the law under apartheid, there is a sense that God’s will is represented in a political way through the administration of the law, designating power and authority to the “Boers”, as God’s chosen people (which, as Derrida states, presents another form of anti-semitism, wherein the Jews are rejected precisely because there can only be one chosen people) (384). Therefore, it is important to note that the structural form of racism in South Africa was fundamentally shaped by the intersection of political and religious power structures, especially those instituted by the Dutch Reform Church and the National Party. Moreover, this is reflected in the institutionalization of Christianity as the state religion.
Therefore, religion played a major role in the justification and legitimization of apartheid. However, while Derrida focuses on the negative role of religion, he is also aware of how religion had an important role in the resistance of apartheid. As Derrida writes, “among the domestic contradictions thus exported, maintained, and capitalized upon by Europe, there remains one that is not just any one among others: apartheid is upheld, to be sure, but also condemned in the name of Christ” (384). Derrida lists a number of organizations involved in the condemnation of apartheid in the name of religion: “the white resistance movement in South Africa should be saluted. The Christian Institute, created after the Sharpeville massacre in 1961, considers apartheid to be incompatible with the evangelical message, and it publicly supports the banned black political movements” (384). Indeed, the dimensions of religious resistance to the systematic abuses of apartheid span throughout a number of diverse religious traditions, including Islamic liberation theology, as well as Gandhian style satiyagraha (truth-grasping). In the context of these passages Derrida shows that the role of religion is never just “one role”, but in reality represents a plurality of “roles”, as well as a diversity of voices.
Therefore, while the religious ideology of South Africa was implicated in the structural racism of apartheid, religion was also a significant vehicle for the social, cultural and political resistance of apartheid. The construction of religion in these contexts reflects a shifting dialectic of cultural politics and identity. How does one begin to unpack such a matter in order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the processes that produced this complexity? In what follows I intend to trace the legacy of apartheid in South Africa, focusing specifically on the role of religion in South Africa during this period. I aim to accomplish three central tasks: to think about the role of religion in the administration of apartheid; to highlight the ways in which religion was used by the state to support the laws and policies of apartheid; to examine the activities of resistance among religious groups and organizations towards the state. I use these questions to reflect on the remains of the legacy of apartheid in post-apartheid South Africa, especially in terms of the shifting categorical constructions of religion and race.
Why is the question of religion important for the study of apartheid and structural racism in South Africa? What is the role of religion in creating the conditions for the institutionalization of racial segregation in South Africa? How has this effected the place of religion in contemporary South African society? I suggest that in the various historical and contemporary contexts of South Africa, religion often functions in terms of a dialectical relationship, simultaneously as a force for oppression and racial segregation (as in the apartheid administration), but also as a way beyond these binary oppositions. In the post-apartheid period this is characterized by the social democratic movement towards liberation, change and multiculturalism in South Africa. However, the way in which the South African government structured its particular understanding of multiculturalism in the post-apartheid period reflects a phonocentric multicultural discourse that privileges multilingualism as the basis for group recognition and identity (Tamarkin 149). As I will discuss, this is particularly the case among the Lemba people, a complex group of ethnically Indigenous, and religiously Jewish, people who have been trying to gain recognition as a distinct community by the South African government, in order to attain a degree of self-determination in the South African democratic process.
The history of apartheid in South Africa reflects a dynamic and complex social, political, cultural and religious environment. To understand the history of apartheid in South Africa it is important to highlight the colonial history of the British and Dutch colonies in the region, which created the conditions for the institutionalized racism in the apartheid regime. Indeed, while the period of apartheid differs from the colonial period of administration (before the South African government declared its independence), it nonetheless shares a high degree of continuity based on how the development of race relations proceeded from colonial times. However, in order to think about the role of colonialism in the implementation of apartheid, it is crucial to discuss how the concept of colonialism itself represents a logocentric development in the history of Western thought.
 Throughout Derrida’s corpus of writing, the themes of colonialism, language, culture and identity are omnipresent. For Derrida, an Algerian Jew, who directly experienced the assimilating effects of colonialism in French Algeria, colonialism left a profound psychological scar on his memory of his years in Algeria, which were marked with a legacy of colonial violence, especially in the context of Crimieux Decree which effectively formed an anti-Semitic policy removing Jewish citizenship from the French Democratic Republic. Derrida’s personal relationship with colonialism represents a crucial perspective on the topic. According to Ahluwalia’s reading of Derrida, in a way colonialism is a product of Logocentrism (329). For Derrida, the category of logocentrism represents the fundamental logic of binary oppositions (“Positions” 35). It seems that this logic structures a hierarchical coding of power relations underlying a particular vision of metaphysical reality (Derrida 36). For Derrida, this is implicated in the philosophical construction of the central ideas of Western Metaphysics, which as Derrida argues throughout much of his work, are essentially violent. Indeed, for Derrida, the violence of logocentric thought is not only a symbolic form of violence, but also creates the conditions for empirical and actual violence (Elmore 35). As McDonald notes, Derrida discusses the centrality of binary logic in Western Metaphysics in terms of logocentrism (83). Indeed, logocentrism is the idea that the philosophical framework of European thought is rooted in the philosophical category of the Logos.
According to McDonald’s reading of Derrida, the Logos represents a transcendental signifier for the existence of truth as a primary and originary source of knowledge (84). According to McDonald, as a concept however, it privileges a particular narrative of origin, and eclipses the possibility of a plurality of ways of knowing, being and seeing in the world. From a logocentric point of view, for instance, only the rational mind is capable of retaining validity (88). One pertinent example of this process reflects the philosophical assumption of the Cartesian cogito (“I”) which verifies empirical truth based on mental impressions of subjective reality (as indicated in Descartes mind/body dichotomy, privileging the mind as the ultimate source of human knowledge). It seems as though, as a disembodied state of mental activity, Western philosophical thought represents the dialectical processes involved in the circulation, movement and emergence of ideas. However, within this context, it has often privileged the dominance of European, and particularly masculine ways of thinking (in Derrida’s thought this is framed as “phallocentrism”). This is evident in the misogynistic, anti-Semitic, racist and colonial ways of thinking that characterized the development of Western philosophy.
In this context, it is important to note how the notions of difference, alterity and otherness, as concepts that are interpreted outside of the Western philosophical frame are generally perceived to be in opposition to Western philosophy. According to McCance, for Hegel, for example, the social history of humanity proceeds on the basis of Spirit, which progresses through the various forms of society throughout history beginning in the East, taking its highest cultural form in the West (47-48). Indeed, Hegel often frames the East as the binary opposite of the West, and thus functions as its dialectical Other (McCance 47-48). It seems the validity and authenticity of Western knowledge is dependent on the logic of binary oppositions, and thus forms the ideological basis for its legitimization. The logic of binary oppositions in the history of Western metaphysics often takes the form of a “violent hierarchy”, wherein the construction of philosophical concepts depends on the imposition of a power dynamic which privileges a certain kind of knowledge. As Derrida reminds us in “Positions”, “we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms controls the other (axiologically, logically etc.) holds the superior position” (36). One particularly important example of this violent hierarchy in Derrida’s thought concerns phonocentrism. As McDonald states, phonocentric thought, which is grounded in the logocentric discourse of Western metaphysics, privileges the voice over writing as a phonetic instrument in the production of knowledge (84). In the Western philosophical canon, the spoken word is framed in a way that precedes the written word on the basis that it is a higher and more profound concept. From this perspective, the spoken word is closer to the fundamental Idea sparked in the human mind. The written word represents the projection of the spoken word, but also its mediation, again acting as its dialectical Other. From this perspective, the spoken word is a more authentic authentic form of human cognition that is ultimately closer to the true presence of the Self. In Derrida’s work the significance of this idea in the history of philosophy can be traced back to the foundational canonical thinkers of the Western philosophical tradition from Plato and Aristotle, to Descartes, Rousseau, Kant and Hegel (85). In what way is colonialism rooted in a phonocentric, and thus logocentric discourse?
  Colonialism is a process of political control that I argue is deeply rooted in the logic of logocentrism. While I must try to avoid reducing colonialism to an essentialist category, I believe that it consists of this primary tension, especially as it concerns the identification of  one culture as superior to another. Indeed, the superiority of a certain culture and language over another, and the imposition of its superiority upon the culture of another, is what constitutes colonialism on a deeper level beyond merely the material and economic conquest of the colonizer upon the colonized. It reveals a whole chain of assumptions about the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized (in itself a binary opposition predicated on a violent hierarchy of oppositional logic). According to Ahluwalia, colonialism figures as the “displacement” of culture, in a way that creates an origin, a centre and a state of social and political awareness, fabricated on a fictional account of colonial power politics (330). In Ahluwalia’s reading of Derrida, the philosophical assumption of a “centre”, presents a paradox that is: a centre without a centre, the centre outside of the centre (330). I suppose what Ahluwalia’s reading of Derrida shows is that the centre is actually a binary opposition that is constantly under erasure, that the centre is inherently unstable and subject to fluctuation. In a way, like other logocentric concepts, the idea of colonialism is precarious because it creates a fictional reality, of a centralized power structure, in order to sustain itself as a legitimate social, cultural, political and economic force.  
 It appears that the dominance of the colonial power structure is often presented as the most “originary” and “true” form of culture, whereas the colonized peoples are often stripped of their cultural languages (or at least the way in which they code their language), and made to feel culturally inadequate (in the sense that language of the colonized is presented as the “official” and “superior” form of intellectual and cultural cognition). Indeed, as I discuss in the following pages, the hierarchy of the colonial project in South Africa is predicated upon this perception of Indigenous people as highly inferior to the colonizer. Indeed, as I discussed in reference to Derrida in “Racism’s Last Word,” the language of the colonizer was often the language of religion, which constructed a certain set of religious beliefs which were implicitly racialized during the time of Dutch and the British colonization of South Africa, and explicitly put into practice during the colonial laws and policies of the apartheid administration. In effect, the processes and stages of colonization presented itself as a dialectical operation of the violent hierarchy between the colonizer and the colonized. In the realities of post-apartheid South Africa, the presentation of colonial culture as an originary form of political governance is in reality a fiction under constant erasure. As previously discussed, I think that for Derrida, logocentrism creates the conditions for violence and the material representation of a certain narrative of “truth” which is expressed in the form of binary opposites. This critique is deeply implicated in the context of colonial South Africa.      
In this paper, I work under the premise that the colonial period in South Africa is characterized by the binary construction of racial oppositions. While this might be obvious, it is important to point out, because it shows how the deeply symbolic violence of colonialism was projected on the Indigenous peoples of South Africa in very real ways. The presence of colonial power in South Africa manifested itself during the period of European exploration in the sixteenth century, as the first Portuguese explorers travelled along the coasts of South Africa in order to seek a trade route to India. While the Portuguese claimed parts of South Africa as their own, the arrival of Dutch colonists on South African soil firmly established Dutch colonial power in South Africa. The first Dutch colony of South Africa, which eventually became modern day Cape Town, was founded by the Dutch navigator Jan Van Riebeeck in 1652. The establishment of this colony ensured the Dutch foothold as the principal colonial power in South Africa. Dutch relations with the Indigenous peoples of South Africa (traditionally referred to in the older literature by the racial terminology of the Hottentot and Bushmen, but now replaced with much more accurate name “Khoisan” which refers to the broader Indigenous population of South Africa), were often marked by “mistrust and suspicion”. As the Dutch colony in South Africa started to increase their control over the majority of the South African coastline, the expansion of Dutch power over South Africa required a significant increase in the agricultural labour force in order to ensure the economic development of the Dutch colonies. Throughout the colonial period, slavery provided the means for economic growth and development. However, the introduction of slavery in South Africa also represented a major challenge to settler colonialism, in the sense that the overwhelming “black” population created a deep insecurity in the “white” settler minority population. Indeed, at the outset of the colonization of South African society, there was a profound anxiety among the white settlers of “being overrun or engulfed” by “black” people. These anxieties persisted throughout much of the history of the colonial establishment in South Africa, and is deeply embedded in the racial policies and laws enforced during apartheid. Furthermore, in contrast to the majority of South Africans, the white population remained a small minority. From this perspective, in order to maintain the strength and cultural dominance of Dutch culture, it was necessary to address the perceived threat of their minority status in a way that monopolized the cultural capital in the hands of the settlers. Therefore, from the perspective of the Dutch colonists, it seems that segregation acted as an important way of distinguishing and strengthening their social and cultural identity, and hence, the cultural dominance of “white” South Africa before and during apartheid.
What is the role of religion in the colonial project of the Dutch settlements in South Africa? In what ways did religion maintain and reinforce the dominant cultural expression of the minority white colonial population? As Derrida discusses in “Racism’s Last Word”, the Dutch colony in South Africa had a strong Calvinist identity which created the conditions for the racial segregation in South African society. This appears to be affirmed in the historical record of the Christian churches in South Africa. According to Tiryakian, the majority of colonists were members of the Dutch Reformed Church (385). Indeed, while the Dutch Reformed Church had a considerable role in creating the theological justifications for the apartheid regime, it also presented a significant marker of in-group identity (Tiryakian 385). Therefore, for the majority of Dutch Europeans in the new colonies of South Africa, religion appears to have been a major source of colonial and cultural identity.
The arrival of the French Huguenots in 1688, only contributed to the strength of the particular strand of Calvinist Protestantism in Dutch South Africa, however both of these groups varied in particular Calvinist interpretations of scripture (Tiryakian 386). For the Huguenots, as well as the Dutch settlers, there was a considerable amount of freedom to practice their faith, given that protestants were heavily persecuted throughout Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, as Tiryakian notes, the way in which the early colonists approached their particular understanding of Calvinistic theology did not limit the involvement of “black” people in church life (387). On the contrary, in the early period of colonization the Christian churches were more inclusive in their involvement of “black” people, especially in terms of their missionary activities. Citing the work of Ben Marais (who is regarded as one of the first members of the Dutch ecclesiastical community to speak out against apartheid), Tiryakian states, “through the 18th century there were no colour-lines in the Dutch reform church, the sole distinction was between Christian and non-Christian, between baptized and non-baptized” (388). However, while it is quite likely that there were “colour lines” at this point in time, the implicit connection here is that the development of racial segregation slowly advanced from a more informal mode of segregation between Europeans and Indigenous South Africans, to a more deliberate, intense and codified method of cultural separation and displacement.
Therefore, it seems that while the earlier period of colonization in South Africa seems to have represented a more inclusive approach the involvement of black people in different aspects of society, including missionary activity, wherein the missionary activity of the white colonists extended religious participation to Indigenous South Africans, the existence of a more formal system of segregation developed within the shifting context of Dutch settler migration. With the arrival of the British in 1820, the Dutch colonial government eventually lost control, and the political power of South Africa was ceded to the British colonial administration. Nevertheless, it appears that throughout the colonial period, South Africa represented a politically contested space of social and cultural control.
Another important part of this story concerns the history of the Afrikaners (the traditional name for the Boers, the Dutch speaking people of South Africa in the period of colonization). The transfer of political power from the Dutch to the British had a significant impact on the Dutch Boer people, especially in the sense of alienating the Boers from their ancestral homeland in Northern Europe (Tiryakian 388). This shift in the political landscape of South Africa forced the Dutch settlers to develop a new cultural identity as a people of the colonial frontier on the ‘edge of civilization’. Furthermore, the imposition of British power led to the great migration of the Dutch Boers throughout the Transvaal, Orange River and Natal regions of South Africa (Tiryakian 388). In terms of the religious significance of this migration, the Boers felt a deep affinity with the Israelites of the Old Testament. Using a particular Calvinist interpretation of the doctrine of predestination, the Boers believed that God had chosen them to build the kingdom of heaven on earth. According to both Derrida and Tiryakian, the Boers, suffering from the trial of exile in the frontier, and facing a host of hostilities, (including the British on one side, and the “Bantu invaders” on the other of their new settlements), perceived themselves to be God’s chosen people (Tiryakian 389-390). As Tiryakian states, for this reason, the Boers favoured the Old Testament over the New Testament, often using the language of the Old Testament as a justification for their harsh treatment of their “black” neighbours, as well as to define themselves as a particular cultural community in the midst of a changing and shifting world. As Tiryakian argues, the particular interpretations of scripture in the Old Testament, and the use of these religious ideas to legitimate the initial discrimination of whites from “people of colour”, in part created the conditions for the development of a nationalist ideology among Afrikaners (Tiryakian 391).  
In any case, the subsequent period of the Dutch legacy in the colonization of South Africa is often framed in terms of the pioneering spirit of the Boar people in an unknown and hostile frontier. In this way, the experience of colonization in South Africa reflects similar developments in the colonization of North America, especially in the context of the missionary activities of colonial authorities towards Indigenous peoples. However, the main point in this section of the essay is that the particular history of the Dutch people in South Africa, and the emergence of their religious ideas in the “frontier” regions of colonial South Africa, developed in a way that greatly affected the institutionalization of apartheid.  
The reorganization of South African society from a colonial system of governance under British rule ultimately led to the implementation of nationalist South African governance under the leadership of the National Party. In 1948, the National Party of South Africa began to introduce a pro-apartheid platform, which advocated racial discrimination against “people of colours”. During that time, there was already a great diversity of people living throughout South Africa, including the local Indigenous populations, Indians, Muslims, Jews, and great number of Europeans from a variety of different countries. However, it seems that the increase of multiculturalism only created tensions in the social and cultural development South Africa. Indeed, multiculturalism and racism were perceived to be a religious and therefore spiritual threat to the very unity and survival of white Afrikaaner South African society. This point is made quite well in the rhetoric of an official statement made by the Dutch Reformed Church which states,
It is the conviction of the majority of Afrikaans speaking South Africans and the members of the DRC that the only way of ensuring survival of the nation is by preserving the principles of racial separation. Racial integration on an extended scale, on the other hand, must result in the lowering of standards, culturally, morally and spiritually (Masuku 153).
Indeed, the opposition towards integration is deeply entrenched in the National Party’s platforms, which effectively sought to create a closed off system of  national citizenship and democracy in South Africa to block “people of colour” and others to participate in the electoral system. At a time when most of the Western world, especially after World War II, was quite aware of the atrocities and cultural genocide of the Nazi regime, it seems from a contemporary point of view, rather startling that such policies and laws could be allowed to be adopted into a formal legal system shortly after the liberation of Europe from the grip of the Nazi regime. However, it is precisely for this reason that Derrida highlights the assertion that apartheid constitutes the most institutionalized form of racism, and therefore the last, at a time when it seems that most of the Western world was deeply against the enactment of such laws. In any case, in what follows I will discuss how the role of religious organizations worked towards justice from within the South African political landscape. Citing the scholarship of the South African legal scholar Harold Wolpe, Tempelhoff writes:
Apartheid unfolded in three stages. The first from 1948-1960 was notable for the decline in structural conditions of mass struggle. The second (1960-1972) saw state repression gathering momentum in an attempt to ‘put down’ the armed struggle. The third phase, as of 1973, Wolpe describes as a time of insurrection, coinciding with a liberation struggle that increasingly forced the apartheid state into defence mode—and led to its ultimate demise (192).  
How was race constructed throughout the stages of this process? What is the role of religion in the processes of repression, struggle and liberation in South African society?
As Derrida discusses in “Racism’s Last Word”, while the Christian churches in South Africa were often complicit in reinforcing  state laws and policies in order to create the conditions for the segregation of “blacks” and “coloured people” from “whites”, a narrow focus on the negative role of religion tends to overshadow the whole story (Derrida 384). Indeed, there is a considerable amount of scholarship that contends that South African churches also presented a challenge to the power structures of the state, and represented a significant form of resistance to State power. As a source of resistance in the state of apartheid, religion plays a complex but significant role in facilitating anti-apartheid developments. According to Kuperus, the role of the Christian Churches during apartheid have “played a critical role” in both the apartheid and post-apartheid eras (Kuperus 278). As Kuperus states, while Christian Churches have often contributed support to the laws and policies of the apartheid era, they have often been the site of criticism, “nation-building”, such as their efforts in Truth and Reconciliation Commission, as well as “civic education efforts” (278).
Moreover, as Masuku suggests, the role of religion in apartheid is not simply a clear cut distinction between those who supported apartheid and those who did not, but rather the reactions to apartheid provoked a multiplicity of different voices in response to the (in)justices of racial segregation (152). As Masuku suggests, “apartheid triggered different reactions in various sections of the South African society, including faith communities. De Gruchy referring to Christian communities writes, ‘some regard racial separation as scriptural, some as blatantly unscriptural, and other as pragmatically necessary but not ideal’” (151).  Within this multiplicity of religious and political actors, it is important to note that while the majority of white Christian Protestant Churches played a major role in support of the state policies of the National Party, there was a minority of actors from within these Churches who questioned the laws of state, and were outspoken towards the injustices of apartheid (Masuku 153). From another perspective, throughout the broader nexus of South African society, religion often represented a multiethnic political platform where people could voice and raise their concerns of the racial and social injustices of working class and poor people in South Africa. In some cases, this was represented through the arts, as another study points to theatre as a form of Indigenous resistance through storytelling. In other cases, the resistance to apartheid was conducted in non-violent ways, as with Gandhi’s form of peaceful political protest of satyagraha (truth-grasping). In addition to this, there is a substantial amount of research on the political role of Muslims during apartheid, often representing politically contested and more radical points of view in South Africa, as with the Islamists under the influence Said Qutb’s writings in the Muslim Brotherhood. In other ways, Muslims, especially among the youth, stood in support of anti-apartheid supporters, reflecting on the struggle against apartheid as jihad (Tayob 27).  While it is perhaps beyond the scope of this essay to address all of aspects of the resistance of apartheid, I include these examples to reflect on the varieties of ways in which religion acted as a form of resistance. The political shift in leadership in South Africa from the authoritarian state of the National Party to South Africa’s first democratic election under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, presents itself in a fascinating moment of, what might be described as the deconstruction of the South African Sate.
I will now briefly conclude with a brief case study on a particularly interesting instance of religious segregation in both the apartheid and post-apartheid eras that I think will be worth discussing in the context of this paper, which up till now has focused on the breaking down of the binary of religion in South African society, to show how the religious nationalism of the National Party has been constructed. It is the remains of racism in the period of post-apartheid South Africa that I now wish to address. The Lemba people represent an important social, cultural, political and religious ‘ethnic’ group in South Africa. The history of Lemba people in the context of apartheid represent a fascinating case study for the study of the intersection of the categories between race and religion, and how these categories have been reconstructed in a way that spells out the structural and racial violence of apartheid in a way that created an extreme situation of cultural marginalization. The Lemba are often remembered in popular media for their DNA tests proving their Caucasian ancestry, as well as several documentaries highlighting their perceived Jewish ethnic ancestry as one of the “lost tribes of Israel,” (Tamarkin 160). As Tamarkin states, it is important to recognize that “the postapartheid South African state is at once ‘nonracial’ and ‘multicultural’ enshrining an official commitment to liberal democracy unmarked by racial distinctions alongside political protection of cultural difference” (148). However, as Tamarkin argues the way in which the Lemba have been treated in the past represents a tremendous issue to the state of multiculturalism in South Africa, because of the way in which their racial heritage has prevented them from attaining self-determination in the apartheid political system, which marginalized them and classified them as part of other tribal groups in South Africa which clearly did not share the same identity of them (Tamarkin 158). Their fight for self determination in contemporary South Africa, based on the fact that they have not yet state received as a distinct cultural community (based on a policy that bases heritage off of language, and not of cultural determination in this way), is a clear sign of the logocentric and thus phonocentric legacy of South Africa. I hope this essay has shed some light on some of these issues, and has least pointed the way towards a greater understanding of the role of religion in the colonial processes of South Africa.





























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