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SYNOPSISThe paired catchment method was used to measure the effects of riparian zone clearing and clearfelling on streamflow, stormflows and water quality. The forested riparian zone of a 39,6 ha, humid Northern Province catchment, amounting to 10 % of the catchment area, was cleared and kept clear of vegetation. Two years later the entire catchment was cleared by bulldozing and burning its cover of indigenous evergreen forest and scrub forest, and replanted to Eucalyptus grandis seedlings. The riparian clearing resulted in a small 55 mm (9 %) increase in streamflow in the first year, and mean increases per storm in quickflow volume of2,32 mm (71 %), in stormflow volume of 4,60 mm (76 %) and in storm response ratio by 2,37 % (a 50 % increase). By the second year these effects were diminished, and total flow was reduced by 56 mm (19 %) below expected flow. Clearfelling and replanting of the catchment had similarly small effects on streamflow and stormflows. This could be ascribed partly to a serious drought at the time of the treatment. Only the total streamflow could be shown to have changed significantly after the clearfelling. In the first year after clearing total flow increased by 27 mm (35 %), but by the second year the rapid establishment ofthe eucalypt crop and a dense cover of weeds had resulted in a small decrease in total flow of 12 mm (6 %). There was no significant response in total suspended sediment (TSS) concentrations to the riparian clearing. In total the sediment loss from the catchment was 0,186 tlha in the first and 0,046 tlha in the second year after the riparian treatment. In the first year after the clearfelling and afforestation of the whole catchment, the only water quality variables to change significantly were K+, NO 3' -N, PO 43,-P and Si. In the second year after clearfellingthere were changes in TSS, K+, TP, Si, N0 3'-N, and P0 43,-P. Sediment losses amounted to only 0,022 and 0,028 tlha in the first and second years respectively. None of the concentrations in stormflow showed significant changes. Most concentration levels, and especially that of sediment, were lower during the period of the drought. We conclude that: 1. indigenous evergreen forest is a relatively conservative user of water and that the quality ofwater from such catchments is high; 2, clearing of riparian and other indigenous forest and scrub vegetation is not a practical means of augmenting streamflow in this region; 3. the apparently extreme treatments applied did not disturb the soil mantle enough, or for long enough, to change the mode of streamflow generation in this catchment; 4. although the extreme clearfelling treatment had a statistically significant effect on a few water quality variables, concentrations never exceeded levels acceptable for aquatic life in river water; and 5. the minimal effects ofthe treatments may in part be due to the below average rainfall experienced during the experiment.

Populism frequently uses the visibility of religious majorities and minorities as polemically charged references in the political controversy about cultural identity. Visible signs are evoked as positive identity markers and representations of the fiction of a homogenous society. The visibility of religions coming from an immigration background is more likely to be attacked as an invasion of foreigners who do not fit in the frame of an imagined authentic model of cultural unity. As the debates on the construction of mosques and minarets in European cities show, Islam becomes a synonym of differences perceived as problematic. Depending on the political agenda, invisible and quiet religions are preferred to the visible and politically more demanding ones. However, the opinions for or against a high degree of visibility are not necessarily shared within the religious communities. Their members can ask for discrete individual practices or for a strong collective presence in the public sphere. Populist discourses try to argue against manifestations of ostentatious visibility and use this fight as a platform for identity-driven propaganda that is interested in the exclusion of those who are considered as the threat to the well-being of the “people”. The visibility of religion thesis has to be dealt with carefully in the context of right-wing populism because of the toxic effects of all kinds of identity politics in the political as well as in the religious sphere. The conventional implications of the public–private split must be rearticulated in a context in which secularism is challenged by the return of visible religion and by the emergence of political ideologies playing with the fire of strong and exclusivist identity claims that are in conflict with ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and diversity management.