Secularism within the ANC in South Africa

This study investigates why South Africa has a very
religious population, and yet a politics that has (so far)
remained secular. I focus on the African National Congress
(ANC), the long-dominant political party, and the role of
religion in their members' electioneering and debates about
public policy at a branch-level. This study employs political
ethnography at six branches of the ANC over a year, as well
as an historical analysis of the changing relationship
between religion and politics in the ANC's history.
The study of secularism is concerned with how the
categories of the religious and the non-religious are defined
and negotiated. However, this scholarship has focused on
the US and Europe, with some (limited) coverage of the
Middle East and North Africa. There are still few studies of
secularism in Sub-Saharan Africa - and this is especially
true of South Africa. This impoverishes theories of
secularism, which are strained in application beyond 'the
West'.
This study furthers a decolonial understanding of
secularism in a post-colonial context that is significantly
under-researched. It will further our understanding of the
nuances of religion and African nationalism, both at present
and in the 20th century, as well as how the boundaries of
the public sphere and private belief are negotiated beyond
the political and religious elite. It is the first study to
comprehensively investigate secularism in South Africa
through fieldwork, rather than archival research.