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The Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research, through the work of Sithembiso Zwane, has theorised a continuum of contested space, including invited space (controlled by dominant sectors), invigorated space (whereby marginalised sectors contend for space within invited space) and invented space (as marginalised sectors transform these spaces into space they control). In this article, we extend our conceptualisation of contested space to the biblical text itself, recognising within biblical text these three forms of space, both in terms of socio-historical text and narrative text. We use the book of Ruth as our biblical text, recognising, first, the production of the canonical text as a contestation of space, following the hermeneutic of Itumeleng Mosala by working backwards away from the canonical form towards marginalised textual remnant voices and second, that literary-narrative setting within the book of Ruth can be read as a contestation of space. Socio-historically, we argue that the canonical text co-opts marginalised textual voices (in terms of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and economics). Narratologically, we argue that the Ruth narrative includes traces of both socio-historical contestation and narrative contestation of space through Ruth’s struggle for invented space. Alongside this focus on the biblical text, we reflect on how the Ujamaa Centre’s community-based work might use these resources for re-reading Ruth with local Southern African communities (in both South Africa and Mozambique) struggling for redemptive invented space in the intersection of gender, sexuality, ethnicity and economics.

This article reflects on the socio-economic and tribal dimensions of both 3 Reigns 12:24p-t and the post-1994 South African transition. Mahmood Mamdani’s recent book, Neither Settler nor Native, provides an analysis of political decolonisation in post-apartheid South Africa, in which he identifies two areas of failure within the significant gains made during South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy—socio-economic justice and tribalisation. These two areas are the unfinished business of our substantive decolonisation of the political. In this article, I use Mamdani’s analysis as an exegetical dialogue partner, probing the socio-economic and tribal dimensions of 3 Reigns 12:24p-t and identifying this text as a proto-tribal text which documents the emergence of tribal economics. Methodologically, this article establishes a to-and-fro tripolar movement between the contemporary South African context and the biblical text. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2023/v36n1a7

South African Black Theology of the 1960–1980s characterised its primary site of struggle as the racial capitalism of apartheid. Intersecting race and/as class has been a distinctively South African contribution to African biblical scholarship. Less common, but equally significant, is the intersection of culture and/as class. This article analyses this trajectory, reflecting on how three South African biblical scholars (Gunther Wittenberg, Makhosazana Nzimande and Hulisani Ramantswana) have discerned the need for the African decolonial project to recognise and recover the class divisions within a culture. A recurring cultural trope across the three scholars is their use of proverbs to discern class distinctions within culture. The works of each of these three scholars and their dialogue partners in South African Contextual Theology and South African Black Theology are interrogated for how they intersect notions of class and culture. https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2020/v34n2a13

Though the state, the church, theology, and biblical interpretation have been considered “sites of struggle” by South Africa’s liberation theologies, the Bible has not. This article reappraises the work of South African Black theologian Itumeleng Mosala (thirty years later) and considers his particular understanding of the Bible as a site of struggle, drawing as he does on redaction criticism. The article analysis Mosala’s notion of the ideological dimensions of redaction criticism, clarifies some of the concepts Mosala uses, argues for the role of literary methods in redactional criticism, and advocates for the inclusion of the “exploited classes” in the exegesis as well as the appropriation of biblical texts. Examples from Isaiah are used by way of explication.

Though the state, the church, theology, and biblical interpretation have been considered ‘sites of struggle’ by South Africa’s liberation theologies, the Bible has not. This article reappraises the work of South African Black theologian Itumeleng Mosala (thirty years later) and considers his particular understanding of the Bible as a site of struggle, drawing as he does on redaction criticism. The article analyses Mosala’s notion of the ideological dimensions of redaction criticism, clarifies some of the concepts Mosala uses, argues for the role of literary methods in redactional criticism, and advocates for the inclusion of the ‘exploited classes’ in the exegesis as well as the appropriation of biblical texts.