As digital technologies increasingly shape what people see, how they are watched, and how they participate in public life, questions around human dignity and a shared sense of reality are becoming increasingly urgent.
This was the focus of the 2026 Tutu Jonker Memorial Lecture, held at the University of the Free State’s (UFS) Albert Wessels Auditorium on Tuesday 18 August under the theme ‘Theology in the Age of Digital Power: Surveillance, Public Life and the Search for a Common World’.
The lecture brought together theology, academia, the church, and students to examine how surveillance, algorithms, and data-driven technologies are reshaping human relationships and public life.
UFS Vice-Chancellor and Principal Prof Hester C. Klopper welcomed attendees, saying that society needs spaces where difficult topics can be tackled from various perspectives. “Universities must create spaces where urgent social questions can be examined rigorously, honestly, and with care,” she said.
She noted that theology has an important contribution to make to conversations about ethics, democracy, power, and public life.
The lecture honours Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Prof Willie Jonker, whose theological and public legacies were shaped by their engagements with injustice, human dignity, reconciliation, and public life. Both were also awarded honorary doctorates in theology by the UFS.
Their legacy provided a fitting context for a discussion about digital power. Prof Klopper reflected on the pair’s encounter at a 1990 Rustenburg church conference; an encounter which she said demonstrates what becomes possible when people speak honestly, accept responsibility, and reach across historical divides.
When technology shapes how we see and are seen
Drawing on Psalm 139 and Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, Prof Reichel explored the tension between the comfort of being seen and the fear associated with constant observation. They also examined South Africa as a case study, considering how surveillance and biometric identification systems can place disproportionate burdens on vulnerable communities.
Their case study examined claims that a large South African surveillance company is “fuelling a form of digital apartheid” in Soweto, a community closely linked with two Nobel Peace Prize laureates: Tutu and Nelson Mandela.
Prof Reichel argued that the concern extends beyond whether digital systems are accurate or biased. The deeper question is how being watched can influence behaviour, encourage self-monitoring, and place limits on freedom. “The concern with surveillance is not only what it sees, but what being constantly seen does to us,” they said.
They continued by placing contemporary surveillance in conversation with theological understandings of the “God who sees”, asking what it means for human beings to live under conditions of increasing digital visibility.
Searching for a common world
She highlighted how algorithms can shape the information people encounter, while data extraction and attention-based economic models influence behaviour. At the same time, people are not merely consumers of digital information; they also create content and participate in shaping digital identities and communities.
This can contribute to increasingly fragmented public realities, Prof Van Oorschot pointed out. Describing these as “cardboard worlds”, she considered how people can encounter different windows of information, resulting in different experiences and understandings of the world. “Publicity is not merely a matter of visibility but democratic self-government,” she said, highlighting the difference between simply being visible and meaningfully participating in public life.
Prof Van Oorschot said the biggest challenge is finding shared worlds in a digital age without requiring everyone to see the world in exactly the same way. “A common world does not require complete agreement, but the ability to recognise differences while still understanding one another and working towards shared goals.”
She also highlighted the question of how people live together, saying that this also echoes the legacy of Tutu and Jonker. She discussed how her faculty’s public theological work confronts division and seeks possibilities for reconciliation across deep differences. While the digital age presents new challenges, the underlying question remains: how can people share a public world when power, information, and even experiences of reality are increasingly shaped by technology?
These thoughts echoed Prof Klopper’s reflection on shared responsibility in her welcoming address, in which she quoted Cameroonian scholar Achille Mbembe: “Living together on the same planet means learning to take care of it; learning to repair it and, above all, to share it.”
The lecture placed this challenge firmly within the role of a university: creating space for rigorous engagement with questions that affect how society understands power, dignity, and public life – and how theological scholarship can engage contemporary issues beyond the university, contributing to conversations about the kind of society people want to build and share.