Recognition without empowerment: Minorities in a democratic South Africa

Abstract

Abstract The new democratic South Africa, the result of the transition in the early 1990s from the minority-dominated apartheid regime to a democratic “non-racial” and “non-sexist” regime, has proudly proclaimed itself to be a “rainbow” nation, united in its diversity. These words encapsulate the victory of the African National Congress (ANC), for which a non-racial South Africa was a central aspiration. But many observers of the transition have thought that managing diversity would be a fundamental challenge to the new nation.