Exhausted or Regenerative Nationalism?

Abstract

In May 2014 the ANC secured a fifth successive landslide election victory, garnering an impressive 62 per cent of the poll, which reflects the party’s continued domination of South African electoral politics. The ANC, like other liberation movements in the Southern African region (Dorman 2006; Melber 2003), has sought to command a position within South African politics and society that extends well beyond that traditionally occupied by a political party elected to serve a term of office: it discursively constructs itself as a liberation movement charged with radically transforming South African society as part of an ongoing (and seemingly infinite) ‘National Democratic Revolution’ (Darracq 2008; Lodge 2004; Southall 2009, 2013). Dorman notes the manner in which the ANC has employed the ‘exclusionary languages of liberation’ to construct and maintain an insider/outsider dichotomy whereby the ANC depicts itself as the ultimate guarantor of the ‘National Democratic Revolution’, which it alone is mandated to fulfil (Dorman 2006: 1092). Johnson (2003: 218) thus notes how by virtue of its impartiality, the democratic state is seen as the only legitimate expression of the interests of the whole nation, becoming coterminous with the ‘national interest’ or the ‘public will’. At the same time all other demands or proposals for social change emanating from outside the state are viewed as partial, subjective or sectarian, regardless of the legitimacy of the demands.