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Africa
and South Africa: Culture
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Cultures:
Religion / Music
Races
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Cultures:
Religion / Music |
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Religion
Besides
modern hospitals and churches, the people in South Africa also go to
the following two for healing:
1. inyanga (巫醫) --usually
men; traditional healers (the principal ones organised in
various local professional associations) using a material divination
apparatus (usually the widespread system based on four divining tablets
making for sixteen basic combinations) and a wide selection of
traditional and neo-traditional medicines;
2. sangoma (占卜師) -- usually
women; spirit
mediums whose distinctive feature vis-a-vis the dingaka is
the inclusion of drumming and trance in divination and treatment, and a
greater emphasis on ancestral rather than sorcery explanations of
disease and other misfortune. (source)
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Sangoma |
Sangoma is
the term for a diviner-priest in the tradition of the Nguni-speaking
peoples (Zulu, Ndebele) of Southern Africa. . . . The sangoma's
powers are based on the fact that she/he is the incarnation of an
ancestral spirit. Usually this spirit makes his presence known by
inflicting on the host a serious disease which cannot be cured by
cosmopolitan medicine. (source)
Preparing for the divination ritual (1) (2)
Preparing for the divination ritual (3): putting chicken bile on the
lips.
(image source: Sight Guides 70, 71)
traditional medicine (image source: Sight Guides
74):
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Music
In a society where you could be jailed for owning a politically
incorrect painting, serious art was forced underground and blandness
ruled in the galleries and theatres. The most striking example of this
was the bulldozing of both District Six,
a vibrant multicultural area in Cape Town, and Johannesburg's Sophiatown, where internationally
famous musicians learned their craft in an area once described as 'a
skeleton with a permanent grin'. Groups such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo have managed to
bring South Africans sounds to a wide Western audience, both during and
after apartheid. (source) |
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Races |
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Races
& their parties:
14% -- The Dutch immigrants -- known as the Boers or
Afrikaners--National Party;
70% -- Africans -- African National Congress (ANC) and Pan-Africanist
Congress
14% -- Colored -- mixed-race people primarily descending from the
earliest settlers and the indigenous peoples
2% -- Asian -- e.g. Indian
Apartheid (a
Dutch word for "apartness" ): 5 million whites dominated over 28
million people (of African, Indian, and white ancestry). The
latter possessed only 13 percent of the land, received poorer
education, were denied the rights of free speech, assembly, and lawful
trial.
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Inequality between Whites and Blacks & Discrepancy
in
their Living Standards
Left -- Suburb of Johanesberg; Right -- Soweto |
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Two playgrounds: the white's on the left and
the black's on the right |
a park made by youth during
1985 as part of the 'Operation Cleanup' (a campaign)
organized by UDF(the United Democratic Front ) affiliates.
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