Repertoires for talking white: Resistant whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

The central question for whiteness in post-apartheid South Africa can be put simply: how to maintain privilege in a situation in which black people have achieved political power. Many stances to the new dispensation are available to white South Africans, but this article concerns only resistant white discourses, referred to as White Talk. Two weekly columns published through 2000 in the most widely read Sunday newspaper in the country were downloaded and analysed. The article demonstrates how two discursive repertoires, New South Africa Speak and White Ululation are played off against each other to enable positive self-presentation while resisting transformation. In some ways South African White Talk has come to resemble the more ‘respectable’ international whitenesses, but the postcolonial, post-apartheid context gives it a different edge, particularly in relation to constructions of Africa.