South Africa’s Jacob Zuma and the Deployment of Christianity in the Public Sphere

Through the dialogue between an emerging pan-Africanist political scholar and a Christian theologian, this study interrogates key aspects of the deployment of Christianity in the public domain under the presidency of Jacob Zuma. After giving an overview of Zuma’s controversial public career, the article focuses on the role of religion and culture in Zuma’s political demagogy, and particularly on his deployment of the Pentecostalized public culture. A “product” of the ANC’s moral absolutism which got out of control, Zuma can be seen—it is argued—as an emblem of the entanglement of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity and politics in South Africa post-1994, and perhaps as a part of a broader global trend toward religious-populist politics.