In a changing South Africa, recovering the meaning and power of African tradition is a matter of crucial importance. This work participates in that recovery by providing a comprehensive guide to research on the indigenous religious heritage of this dynamic country. Detailed reviews of over 600 books, articles, and theses are offered along with introductory essays and detailed annotations that define the field of study. This work plus two forthcoming volumes, Christianity in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography and Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism in South Africa: An Annotated Bibliography will become the standard reference work on South African religions. Scholars and students in Religious Studies, Social Anthropology, History, and African Studies will find this set particularly useful.
This work organizes and annotates all the relevant literature on Khoisan, Xhosa, Zulu, Sotho-Tswana, Swazi, Tsonga, and Venda traditions. The annotations are concise yet detailed essays written in an engaging and accessible style and supported by an exhaustive index, which comprise a full and complex profile of African traditional religion in South Africa.
About the Author: DAVID CHIDESTER is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town. His recent books include Savage Systems: Colonialism and Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (1996), Religions of South Africa (1992), and Shots in the Streets: Violence and Religion in South Africa (1991).
CHIREVO KWENDA is Lecturer in Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town. His disseration (1993) was entitled True Colors: A Critical Assessment of Victor Turner's Study of Ndembu Religion. He is coauthor of African Religion and Culture Alive (forthcoming, 1997).
ROBERT PETTY is Research Associate at the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town. His disseration was on the fragments of Numenius.
JUDY TOBLER is Research Manager for the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town. She completed her doctoral research in Religious Studies in 1997 with the disseration, Gendered Signs of the Sacred: Contested Images of Mother in Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and Hindu Myth, at the University of Cape Town.
DARREL WRATTEN is Lecturer in Religious Studies and Associate Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa at the University of Cape Town. His dissertation (1995) was entitled Buddhism in South Africa: From Textual Imagination to Contextual Innovation.
