A Return to Paradise and its People - Durban

SHEMBE The Shembe faith is often referred to as an Africanised
Christianity. Although there is much reference to the Old Testament
and conventional Christian rituals, the faith’s spiritual resonance is
more African than Western. The church was founded in 1910 by the
Prophet Isaiah Shembe and today has millions of followers who
gather together in marginal outdoor spaces. Dressed in white,
they assemble on traffic islands around the city for prayer or to
practise their haunting Shembe horn, the inspiration for the vuvuzela.
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FAITH
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT RELIGION IN DURBAN,
you can learn much from a walk around the city’s streets. As
well as the host of mosques, temples, churches and cathedrals,
declarations of faith are to be found everywhere – from the
small star-shaped insignia that Zionist devotees wear on their
lapels to the huge selection of buses and minibuses bearing
religious messages.
Although South Africa is constitionally a secular country,
most of its population lays claim to a recognised faith, with the
majority of Durbanites claiming some form of Christianity as
their belief structure. In keeping with the city’s multicultural
reality, religion in Durban is a vibrant melting pot of beliefs and
theologies many of which have been reconstructed and infused
with a spirituality that is markedly African in its content.
And while religions are often defined by their separateness
from each other, in times of struggle, Durban’s various belief
systems often come together in multi-faith services. From the
Shembe devotees to the Hare Krishnas to the Zanzibari
Muslims, faith in Durban is a reflection of the global nature of
the city’s genesis.
CHRISTIANITY While most Durbanites profess to being Christians,
this often means an entirely different set of rituals, prophets and
theological structures to those usually associated with the faith.
African Christianity, in the form of the Zionist and Shembe
devotees, constitute a sizeable proportion of the Christians in
Durban, although there is a significant and diverse following of
‘conventional’ Christianities. Together, they fulfill every possible
permutation Album: Introducing within the Shiyani parameters Ncgobo of modern Christianity.