Critical Concepts for the Study of Religions in South Africa

This special issue emerged from a panel at the 43rd Association for the Study of Religion in Southern Africa Conference in October 2022. The conference theme, ‘Religion and Humanities’, inspired the four postgraduate student panellists to revisit concepts often overlooked as critical to the study of religions in South Africa. These concepts were non- English and included ‘gam’, ‘djyg’, and ‘slamse’. The editors later invited one doctoral candidate to contribute the concept of ‘veldkind’ and asked two scholars of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of the Western Cape, where the conference was hosted, to contribute a reflection on the concepts ‘slāwat’ and ‘barakāt’. Our aim in this special issue is threefold. First, we emphasize the epistemic, political, and personal value of studying, theorizing, and teaching about religions in South Africa through non- English language concepts. We illustrate how the recovery and repositioning of these concepts require us to inhabit and negotiate our insider identities as priests (Allies), Reverends (Sebolai), adherents (Osman), and guests (Saidi and Mohammed). Second, we illustrate that although these concepts benefit the study of religions in South Africa, their genealogy and etymology extend the present- day borders of South Africa to include people, places, and pasts elsewhere. Third, these concepts are neither exhaustive of the many terms available to theorize and study in relation to religions in South Africa nor is each concept restricted to any one religion. Instead, we deploy these concepts as exploratory devices for understanding contemporary phenomena; addressing historically overlooked actors and events, ways of knowing, being, and seeing in the world; and offering a new perspective to existing and exciting debates in the study of religions in South Africa and beyond.