Who wants a reparative future? Social mobility beliefs, and young South African’s narrative positioning within the historic moral community

Abstract

This paper explores how young South Africans think about the need for a reparative future through a consideration of their relationship to South Africa’s historic moral community. By historic moral community I draw on MacIntyre (2007), Sandel (2009), and Shotwell’s (2016) work to refer to the network of those from whom we inherit, and to whom we owe, an obligation – past, present, and future.This paper draws on data from a ten-month classroom ethnography in Cape Town. The ethnography looked at four Grade 9 history classrooms in four racially distinct schools and included multiple interviews with between four and six students from each class (n=20) over the course of the year. Data collection focussed on how the legacies of apartheid were taught, and how students learned to use history to make sense of their personal circumstances and contemporary society. It also explored students’ narratives regarding their own social mobility trajectories, how they perceived the effects of apartheid on their own lives, and attitudes regarding the need for reparative action in light of apartheid.The data demonstrated not only the diversity of attitudes towards reparative futures that exist among South African youth, but also suggests that young people who narrate their life trajectories as being intertwined with South Africa’s historic moral community both advocate for collective responsibility for past injustice, and feel a sense of agency over their future social mobility.