This article concerns African Christians' attempts to accommodate traditional practices - in this instance male initiation - within their evolving Christianity. It speaks to an on-going concern around the place of custom in modern Africa and the uses to which custom and its invocation are put. Contrary to the literature, which locates the adaption of custom by Chri...

What is Sophiatown? Is it a vibrant black, urbanity, or a more tragic recollection: the suburb that was destroyed by the apartheid state's forced removals of black South Africans from areas proclaimed white from the 1950s onwards. Both of these representations have considerable contemporary traction. The former lends itself to a very nostalgic view of the suburb, t...