(Lost) tribes to citizens: Lemba 'black Jews' engage the South African state

This dissertation traces the efforts of Lemba people to position themselves variously as diasporic Jews and as indigenous Africans in pursuit of political and cultural citizenship in South Africa. Best known for DNA tests that Lemba men participated in to prove their Jewish ancestry, the Lemba have been the subject of both scholarly and popular debate about 'lost tribes of Israel,' 'black Jews,' and 'Semites' in South Africa since the late nineteenth century. Drawing on fifteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in rural villages and townships, I examine contemporary Lemba politics of race, gender, citizenship and belonging against a backdrop of ongoing material conditions of structural inequality. Lemba efforts to attain rights, resources and belonging in South Africa depart considerably from contemporary media productions that present them as solely interested in being recognized as Jews. My analysis highlights the multiple subjectivities of Lemba people to demonstrate that Lemba identities are not simply instrumental means to achieve material ends, but rather meaningful in and of themselves to Lemba people as they struggle to find a viable place in their worlds. This dissertation poses the question: how do Lemba identities and politics illuminate relationships between political and cultural citizenship and between national and transnational belonging? Considered to be variously African or un-African, and Jews or Christians, Lemba people do not see these categories as mutually exclusive. Their re-readings of race and religion challenge conventional understandings of diaspora and indigeneity and enable new ways to think about citizenship, blood, and belonging.