African traditional religion : a receptive vessel for the preparation for the Christian faith

Abstract

South Africa has been characterised by affliction of colonialism, apartheid and the failure to love other races, a Christian country which oppressed and forced blacks to embrace western style of life imparted by the missionaries. Due to colonisation and missionary zeal, Africans were to live in pretence by a double standard which has now resulted in schizophrenic behaviour of betrayal of their own roots. Swazi beliefs and practices were not taken into consideration as they were regarded non-existent.The research study will introduce the Swazi African Traditional Religion of South Africa as the main source of Christianity and examine how it prepared so many millions of the Swazi people to embrace the Christian faith; make a contribution to nation building and social cohesion of the Swazi people of South Africa and other South African ethnic groups as well as the continental Swazi people; establish the relationship between Swazi African Traditional Religion and Christanity;make a contribution to the contemporary Church context; analyse the data captured during the interviews of both Christians and adherents of SATR in the fourteen traditional councils in order to formulate some findings; examine where Christianity and Swazi African Traditional Religion have their meeting points to merge the ideas and understanding and make recommendations to the FBOs, Government and sampled Traditional Councils for possible implementation and their benefit. The researcher will engage in field research methodologies where other multi-disciplinary applications such as history; anthropology; liberation, black and African Christian theologies will be considered and involved. The reason to use this multidisciplinary approach is that the study involves God, human beings, their religion, their environment, their patterns of social, cultural behaviour and their liberation as societies of the past, present and future.We will use mainly qualitative research method which includes participant observation, direct observation, and conducting interviews using questionnaires entailing structured and unstructured questions.