Non-violent conflict resolution and peace building in South Africa

Abstract

In this article I use two recent media events to consider the history of and prospects for peaceful transformation in South Africa. First, I use the cricket World Cup to dramatise the post-colonial global context within which modern-day South African subjectivities have come into being. I argue that while South Africans, and in particular black South Africans, are constrained by discourses of exoticism, they also make positive use of the double consciousness which is thus foisted on them to forge new forms of personal and national identity. Second, I use local opposition to the war against Iraq as emblematic of the role played by civil society and peaceful protest in bringing about South Africa's political transformation. However, I argue that the social capital built up before, during and immediately after the apartheid years is now being eclipsed by the global predominance of private capital.