We investigate links between the practice of ilobolo [bridewealth] and marriage outcomes in contemporary Zulu society. We present quantitative data which describe very low marriage rates particularly among Zulu adults, and which suggest also that the majority of Zulu adults identify ilobolo as a constraint to marriage.
This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer (igqirha), Nomzi Hlathi
(pseudonym), as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha
and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that
The devastating influenza epidemic of 1918 ripped through southern Africa. In its aftermath, revivalist and millenarian movements sprouted. Prophets appeared bearing messages of resistance, redemption, and renewal. African Apocalypse: The Story of Nontetha Nkwenkwe, A Twentieth-Century Prophet is the remarkable story of one such prophet, a middle-aged Xhosa woman named Nontetha.
This briefing investigates traditional African healing as a meaningful space for African women to not only with and express their spirituality, but also to live the power that is inherent within that spirituality.
There is an ongoing challenge in defining African theology because of two important reasons:
(1) the quest for a definitive African theology is a fairly recent pursuit and (2) the vastness and
diversity of the African continent. Given this, this article presents the complexity of defining
This thesis begins with the assumption that the theory of academic dependency provides an
adequate framework within which the relationship between social science communities in the
North and South can be understood. Present problems of social scientists in the South have
very often been attributed to this dependence and it has been concluded that academic
Xolela Mangcu’s recent biography of Steve Biko takes up its place in the contested field
of “Biko Studies”. It remains an open question as to why, given the explosion of
scholarly interest in Biko, and his ever-increasing popularity as an icon of the liberation
struggle, it has taken this long for a self-declared biography of Biko to appear.