Revisiting the National Question and Identity

Abstract

The struggle against apartheid left many questions relating to the various meanings of non-racialism, identity and political practice unresolved, and there are some questions that have arisen since South Africa's transition to democracy for which previous understandings of non-racialism and the National Question may be inadequate. The debate about which groups constitute ‘national minorities’, how they should be defined and how their ‘essential attributes’ could be identified has never been resolved. The debate was deferred and subordinated to the exigencies of political mobilisation and organisation, which took the existence of races for granted. This article shows how the idea of recognition and anti-essentialism drawn from contemporary social theory can contribute to a re-conceptualisation of collective political identities in ways that have the potential to contribute to a deepening non-racialism as an egalitarian political project in a constitutional democracy.