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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Whatever happened to ‘non-racialism’ in post-apartheid South Africa? Ethnographies from Pretoria West
| Panel |
34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
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| Paper ID | 518 |
| Author(s) |
Sharp, John
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | My argument in this paper is that, owing to their present circumstances, the conservative, white, Afrikaans-speaking inhabitants of the former working-class suburbs to the west of Pretoria have a better practical grasp of the principle of ‘non-racialism’ than today’s middle-class South Africans, whether white or black.
The first part of the paper provides a brief history of the residents of these suburbs, showing how the contemporary circumstances that dispose them to look beyond ‘race’ in their day-to-day activities have come about. This historical overview will also allow comment on the origins of the present obsession with the immediacy of ‘race’ on the part of the middle class, despite the fervent professions of many of its members that they are not – or are no longer – racists. Part of the history of the Pretoria West suburbs is the history of white middle-class attempts to ‘uplift’ the so-called ‘poor whites’ from the 1930s onwards, and many South African ideas about ‘race’ – specifically about the relationship between race and culture – were forged in this period, often with particular reference to the uplifting of the poor whites.
The second part of the paper deals with some of my fieldwork observations in contemporary Pretoria West, attempting to show how and why issues of ‘race’ have become more thoroughly relativised in this area than in other (more affluent) parts of the city.
The conclusion returns to the question of what one might mean by the long-standing ideal of South Africa as a ‘non-racial’ society, why so many people appear to have turned their backs on this ideal today, and why the scrutiny of situations such as that in Pretoria West is significant if we wish to recover it.
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