Introduction: Contingency and Creativity: South Africa after Apartheid

Abstract

In recent years, South Africa has been the subject of intense international interest and investigation as the end of apartheid brought rapid and far-reaching changes in the lives of South Africans. These changes have by no means been uncomplicated or always positive for its citizens. Of course, it is not just South Africa that is in a of uncertainty, of frustration with modernity and its postponements (Comaroff and Comaroff 2000:292). No corner of the globe has lingered untouched by the disruptions of a globalizing late/postmodern moment. Further, though South Africa has recently been in a particularly dramatic of flux, these changes did not begin with the end of apartheid in 1994. They have their roots in a long and violent history of encounters between North and South, Europe and Africa (see Terreblanche 2003). Nonetheless, the dismantling of white, minority rule did introduce new challenges, new energies and new modes of change into the South African landscape. The end of apartheid has also sparked a new set of personal, moral, social, political, and economic crises in South African communities. The list of ills that burden the country has become (over-)familiar both inside and outside the country. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) unearthed distressing memories and volatile information about past atrocities without providing adequate followup in the form of promised reparations (for victims) or prosecutions (of perpetrators). Political violence has been replaced with a surge in criminal violence. HIV/AIDS is widespread and growing and the government response to the crisis has been uninspired at best. So far, renewed access to global markets, combined with neoliberal economic policies at home, has not reduced unemployment or inflation (see South African Human Rights Commission 2003 for the most recent, critical overview of the state of the nation). But this litany of catastrophes, this way of cataloguing current or emerging disasters has itself become a (problematic) form of political discourse and practice. Witness the much discussed flight of the white middle class (to London, Sydney, or Atlanta), which some describe as racist Afro-pessimists unreasonably abandoning a country that has great potential and vitality. Opposition parties in the country, despite the precious chance to contribute to building a political culture of democratic debate and dissent, keep raising the (racially coded) scepter of yet another African gone mad. The ruling African National Congress seems happy to keep pushing them into this trap and taking the moral high ground since debate and dissent do not seem to be high on its agenda either. In the process, an old and destructive discourse (though one that has never been far below the surface) of European enlightenment and its noble battle against a dark, primitive, unknowable African heart of darkness has been revived.