Masenya (Ngwana’ Mphahlele)’s Cultural (Re-)turn within South African Biblical Studies: Intersecting ‘Culture’ and ‘Racial Capitalism’

Abstract

In honouring the biblical studies work of Madipoane Masenya (Ngwana’ Mphahlele), my article situates Masenya within the debates in South African Black Theology on ‘culture’ in the 1980s. This is the period Masenya began her formal biblical studies work, forging a distinctive cultural emphasis both within South African (largely White) Old Testament studies and an emerging African Biblical Interpretation/ Hermeneutics/ Studies. The particular focus of my article is on how Masenya’s (re-)turn to culture, intersected with the dominant race and/ as class analysis of Black Theology in the 1980s and how Masenya’s work has over more than four decades intersected culture with gender as well as with multiple other systemic realities. My article places Masenya’s work alongside the related work of the Ujamaa Centre for Community Development and Research, for both have sought to intersect ‘culture’ and ‘racial capitalism’ and both have sought to serve ordinary African women with their biblical praxis. The article uses Masenya’s and the Ujamaa Centre’s pivotal work on Job to illustrate how socially engaged biblical scholarship heeds the summons of local African communities to serve their lived realities.