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The Birth of the Rainbow Nation the Challenges of the Historical Transition from Apartheid to Democracy Were Enormous

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The Birth of the Rainbow Nation the Challenges of the Historical Transition from Apartheid to Democracy Were Enormous VU Research Portal The country we are supposed to be Welschen, S.I. 2012 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) Welschen, S. I. (2012). The country we are supposed to be: Born free South Africans talk about their nation. In eigen beheer. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. E-mail address: [email protected] Download date: 24. Sep. 2021 7 Chapter 1: Introduction One country, two different moments South Africa, October 2007. A random pick of newspaper headlines that week: ‘The whole country is behind the Boks, says Mbeki’ (The Witness, 20.10.07), ‘Duisende Wag op Bokke, sommiges slaap by lughawe om hulle te sien ’ (‘Thousands await the Boks, some sleep at the airport to see them’, Beeld, 24.10.07), ‘ Bok Mbeki – a cause for hope’ (The Witness, 27.10.07), ‘ Go Bokke, Go! – KZN gets behind the team ’ (The Witness, 20.10.07), ‘ Boks shirts sell out’ (The Witness, 20.10.07). On the evening of October 20 th 2007, the ‘Springboks’ or ‘the Boks’ – the South African national rugby team – won the Rugby World Cup in a thrilling final against the English team in Paris. When the final whistle blew, the country erupted in jubilant celebrations that were to continue in the following days. Television stations kept broadcasting the images of the celebrating rugby team, carrying both the Cup and President Mbeki on their shoulders. For days afterwards, the streets were adorned with people sporting Springbok jerseys and South African flags being waved from car windows. The news media reported extensively on the arrival of the rugby team back on home soil. Hundreds of fans had waited for hours in the night to give their sports heroes a warm welcome. Commentators emphasised the fact that the crowd consisted of people of all colours. The identity constructed in these reports was that of a nation that was celebrating more than just the achievement of an important sports victory. It was an image of a nation that was celebrating an intense moment of togetherness, and savouring that moment for as long as it would last. An image of a nation that breeds success, proudly taking its place on the international stage. South Africa, May, 2008. Another selection of headings from the local newspapers: ‘Xenophobia hits South Africa’s standing’ , ‘ I really hate your country’ (both Mail and Guardian, May 30 th to June 5th 2008), ‘ Weekend attacks on Foreigners kill 12’ (The Witness May 19 th 2008). During the course of just a few weeks in May 2008, widespread violence against primarily African migrants had spread like wildfire across the country’s townships, leaving over 60 people dead and thousands displaced. The attacks had started in the township of 8 Chapter 1 Alexandra near Johannesburg and soon spread to other townships around Johannesburg, Cape Town, KwaZulu-Natal and Mpumalanga. Although xenophobic violence is not new to South Africa, the May 2008 attacks stood out for their scale and intensity. The violence was concentrated in informal housing settlements in which fifty percent of all inhabitants live below the poverty line (Human Sciences Research Council 2008:14). The primary victims of the attacks were Africans from neighbouring countries, notably Zimbabwe, Malawi and Mozambique. International media coverage of the attacks was extensive. The confronting image of ‘the burning man’, the Mozambican who was set on fire, circulated around the globe. Images of mobs of angry young men carrying torches, out to loot and burn to the ground the humble residences of migrant workers dominated the newspapers. When the attacks died down, their repercussions continued with UNHCR refugee sites being set up across the country and migrants queuing up for protection at police stations.The image emerging from these events was diametrically opposite that of October 2007. This was an image of a nation marked by violent conflict, deprivation, fear, grinding poverty and discrimination: an image that resulted – according to the newspaper headlines – in a stained international reputation. ‘South Africa is disgusted with itself’, reads an international newspaper quote (Spiegel Online, 27.05.2008). The intense public response to the attacks within South Africa reflected these sentiments of confusion, shame and soul searching. Reports followed of local communities mobilizing against the attacks, begging the migrants to return and promising to ensure their safety (Spiegel Online, 27.05.2008). Commentators speculated about the causes of the attacks, and reopened debates about the boundaries of belonging in South Africa. Politicians emphasized the contradiction between these events and South Africa’s self-chosen identity: ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it; foreigners have helped to develop the economy of the country – we cannot be seen as attacking them’ (Home Affairs Minister Mapisa-Nqakula, cited on news24.com, 2008). At the same time, organizations of refugees and independent researchers pointed out that the events had been ‘a long time coming’ and were symptoms of a more general practice of ill-treatment of foreigners in South Africa (Landau et al. 2004). Nation-building in post-apartheid South Africa I happened to be living in South Africa studying national identity formation at the time when these two very different events occurred, and I witnessed the extreme shift in the ‘national mood’ that they triggered. In my view, this signalled something fascinating and theoretically important about national identification. It illustrated how the meaning of national identity develops in highly erratic patterns in reaction to large scale, newsworthy events. It showed how one and the same nation can manifest jubilant national pride and Introduction 9 confidence in one moment and an overwhelming sense of an identity crisis in the next. This striking phenomenon is the core theme of this dissertation. Within this area of interest, I will focus specifically on how ordinary people make sense of such distinct events in relation to their national identity. The underlying motivation for this study is a more general interest in the development of a collective national identity in post- apartheid South Africa. As a Master’s student, I had studied the South African truth and reconciliation commission process from a perspective of transitional justice. The key question that remained unanswered in that study was whether in the longer run South Africans would be able to develop the type of ‘thick reconciliation’ that was being aimed for, a reconciliation that would allow for a durable sense of social cohesion, mutual responsibility and of belonging together as fellow nationals. With the historic first democratic elections of 1994, South Africa made the transition from apartheid and oppression to democracy and political freedom. That was, however, only the first step on the long road towards a sense of collective identity and social cohesion among a population that had been internally divided for centuries. The historical legacy of the apartheid system inevitably weighs upon any consideration of the theme of national- identity construction in the South African context. When the country became a democracy in 1994, it emerged from an institutionalized, legislated system of racial oppression and segregation that excluded people of colour from political power and maintained white minority rule. Within this system, identity politics played a central role. The system of segregation, so central to the logic of apartheid, operated on the basis of rigid racial and ethnic identity categories. Flowing from this system were legalized and institutionalized spatial boundaries between different groups, and a definition of rights and duties of each group. The result of this system on the collective imagination of the country’s population was powerfully described by Alistair Sparks in 1990: The world is familiar with the apartheid division that runs through South African society, separating its white and black living areas, its schools, its social amenities, its political institutions, its trains, buses, taxis, ambulances, hospitals, its cemeteries even. But what is deeper than any of these is the division that runs through the psyche of the nation [...]. Two minds, two worlds, one country [...] where people occupy the same space but live in different time frames so that they do not see each other and perceive different realities. (Sparks 1990: xvii) Social segregation thus came to play a central role in the formation of collective identities in South Africa, with race being the primary marker to draw boundaries between different groups (Zegeye, Lieberberg and Houston 2000:159). The categories of nationhood and national identity were equally interpreted along racially exclusive lines, distinguishing the enfranchised white nation from disenfranchised black African, ‘Coloured’ and Indian 10 Chapter 1 nations or ‘volkere’. The ‘national question’ – the struggle around the content of nationhood – was one of the most contested issues in the apartheid era (Alexander 2003:55). It is in this historical context that post-apartheid South African leaders embarked upon their political project of building a united, cohesive South African nation: an ambitious aim given the complex and historically charged point of departure.
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