Between Recognition and Resentment: An Afrikaner Trade Union's Brand of Post-Nationalism

Abstract

What comes after Afrikaner nationalism? This article presents a detailed analysis of the discourse of the mainly white Afrikaner trade union Solidarity to explore Afrikaner identity politics after apartheid. Solidarity has claimed a remarkably prominent position in the post-apartheid debates about Afrikaner identity, race and class. The trade union's success, I argue, should be explained within the context of the neoliberal elite transition and the uneven impact of the African National Congress (ANC)'s policies of racial redress. Both developments affect particularly the lower middle class of Afrikaners. My analysis exposes subtle shifts in Solidarity's rhetoric after 1994: away from the language of Afrikaner nationalism and white supremacy, and towards a new discourse organised around the tropes of ‘rights’ and ‘belonging’. This discourse has given new legitimacy to Solidarity in the post-apartheid political landscape; while simultaneously repositioning Afrikaners as a victimised, threatened and no-longer-privileged minority. However, a tension in Solidarity's discourse between this new politics of recognition and their politics of resentment remains. I explain this tension through the distorting effects of shame dynamics.