Postcolonial casualties: ‘Born-frees’ and decolonisation in South Africa

Abstract

ABSTRACT In South Africa, ‘decolonisation’ has re-emerged as a theme for identity, economic and cultural contestations among the youth. In this, the celebratory rhetoric of rainbow nationalism of post-apartheid utopia is confronted head-on. From a theoretical discourse of the problematics of ‘the postcolonial’ this inquiry engages a critical question: if decolonisation is to undo colonial (and apartheid) economic, political and cultural legacies, to what extent has this been achieved for the South African youth? The struggle for political decolonisation (freedom) was such a long and painful journey that the wounded still bear the scars. But political freedom is an imagined trophy that newly independent states parade as decolonisation; cultural and economic colonisations are more indelible to unsettle. Drawing from public data, social statistical information, media narratives and academic literature, I argue that the post-apartheid youth, although ‘born-free’, remain victims of coloniality and the difficult process of decolonisation.