Abstract
At a time when ethnic and national struggles that were long thought extinct are burning out of control, this chapter will discuss a racial cum ethnic cum national conflict that was widely expected to lead to cata-strophic bloodshed but, instead, has so far seen relatively peaceful accommodation. In a volume focused on ‘challenges to the nation state’, I wish to focus upon a phenomenon that seems to have some-thing distinctly old-fashioned about it: an attempt to settle a poten-tially destructive racial conflict by framing it as a project of democratic nation-building. I will seek to show how it is that the African National Congress’ policy of non-racialism, first conceived of in a much more rudimentary form in 1912, is a project of civic nationalism, in short, a venture in civility.
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