|
|
AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
Show panel list
Profit prophets and God's money: Of family demons and the blessed life
| Panel |
34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
|
| Paper ID | 575 |
| Author(s) |
Wyk, Ilana van
|
| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
|
| Abstract | The paper considers the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God. Zulu people’s judgements of the UCKG centre on the immoral (but real) source of the church’s material blessings, the dangers of the ‘fast’ money they promise and the frightening new sources of power that this implies. Such criticisms flow from a wider discourse about the capricious manner in which money (and power) is distributed in post-liberation South Africa. These new sources of power are mapped onto older structures and serve to magnify the potentialities of evil and trickster figures. Such criticisms betray a profound divergence between official and popular perspectives on the logic of the distribution of capital in South Africa. |
|