This chapter is an edited rendition of a series of conversations between Joel Cabrita and Sabelo Mlangeni that took place on the phone, in person and over e-mail, in Johannesburg, Mbabane and New York, between June 2017 and July 2018. Cabrita's recent work has focused on the history of Zionism in southern Africa – one of the largest African Christian movements in the region with an estimated 15 million adherents – and Mlangeni has a longstanding interest in photographing Zionist communities. Their collaboration has taken the form of two exhibitions of Mlangeni's photographs of Zionist Christians, at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge, England, in 2017 and at Wits Art Museum (WAM) in Johannesburg in 2018. The theme of ‘anxiety’ – defined here as a state of being existentially and materially unsettled or ‘out of place’, also akin to a state of liminality – has pervaded many of their conversations surrounding religion and photography in contemporary Johannesburg.

JOEL CABRITA: Sabelo, much of your photography has focused on two areas: Driefontein in Mpumalanga, the small village you‘re originally from, and Johannesburg, the city you moved to in 2001, to pursue studying and work. With regard to Driefontein and surrounding small towns, I‘m thinking of series like your Country Girls and your recent body of work on Zionist Christianity, Umlindelo wamaKholwa. Series like Invisible Women and Big City were shot in Johannesburg, while Umlindelo wamaKholwa has images taken in both Driefontein and Johannesburg. I‘m struck by how your continual oscillation between Driefontein and your life in the city seems to be a productive creative force for you. You never quite belong in either place, but rather than creating anxiety in any stereotypical sense, this feeling of perpetual displacement is a generative and positive dynamic for you and for your work. And I think the title of this volume – Anxious Joburg – captures something of those liminal complexities: of both belonging and not belonging to a city like Joburg, an experience that surely you share with very many of the city's inhabitants, both historically and in the present day. So, let's first focus on that somewhat unsettled state of existing between two places and two homes. Leaving aside your experiences in Joburg for a moment, can you tell me about growing up in Driefontein?