Identity In South Africa Research Articles

Queering the social emergence of disabled sexual identities: Linking queer theory with disability studies in the South African context

abstractPeople with disabilities share many similar experiences to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) people. Besides a history of ongoing activism, sexual minorities and disabled people share a history of social injustice, oppression and isolation. Perhaps the most compelling intersection is found in the respective disciplines of queer theory and disability studies, which both challenge hegemonic constructs of normalcy. Despite this, there have been few attempts to combine both disciplines within an African context. This absence comes as no surprise, especially given the fact that youth and adults with disabilities are typically constructed as de-gendered and asexual.Given this lack of reciprocity, this article explores the intersections between queer theory and disability studies in the construction of disabled sexual identities in the South African context. The significance of this article is not just that a number of people with disabilities identify as LGBTI or vice versa, but the fact that queer theory can challenge and extend current debates surrounding disabled sexual identities in South Africa. Correspondingly, disabled sexualities have the potential to queer constructs of African sexualities.

Special issue on bi/multilingual identity in South Africa

Special issue on bi/multilingual identity in South Africa

Commercial music radio, race and identity in South Africa

In South Africa, listeners often believe that radio stations deliberately constitute their audiences in terms of race. This article further explores this notion using commercial music station Good Hope FM as a case study. Radio creates a textured soundscape that is experienced as part of the material culture of the home; it contributes to the creation of domestic environments and it can help maintain and establish identities. These assertions are explored further through interviews with listeners. Mediated experience has long influenced self-identity, and this study explores popular conceptualizations of GHFM as a ‘coloured’ or mixed-race radio station, through these listener interviews, conducted in the home. The article explores the possibility that the symbolic arrangement of broadcast music and talk elements in one ensemble, embody and expresses group self-consciousness; and that the cultural consumption of GHFM leads to the formulation of an imagined identity based on ethnicity. Consumption of radio station content becomes a dialectical identity-forming process played out through tuning in. While GHFM listeners re-articulate normative discourses of identity and old apartheid constructions in their reflections on their media consumption, the article shows the act of tuning in as a critical part of their dialectical identity-forming process.

Defending Hinduism or Fostering Division? The Decision to Introduce Hindu Religious Instruction in Indian Schools in South Africa during the 1950s

AbstractThis paper examines the debates and tensions that emerged during the 1950s, when the South African Hindu Maha Sabha approached education authorities about permitting Hindu religious instruction in selected primary schools. While important to the Maha Sabha, this move brought strong opposition from many quarters. Hindu reformers aimed to promote a ‘monolithic Hinduism’ and recreate it. However, given the heterogeneity of South African Hindus, who were divided by class, caste, language, region of origin, and the presence of Christian and Muslim Indians, many critical voices feared that teaching religion at school would foster divisions within the ‘Indian community’, which was considered anathema when it was perceived as necessary to unite against the racist policies of the white minority apartheid government. The deep-seated fears that were exposed by this debate reveal interesting insights about the multifaceted nature of Indian identity and Hindu identity in South Africa.

‘Licking the snake’ – the i'khothane and contemporary township youth identities in South Africa

ABSTRACTThe i'khothane youth subculture is a relatively new phenomenon that has emerged in some of South Africa's townships. Characterised by the rampant consumption of certain goods, such as expensive clothing, the subculture is unique in that it is also defined by the destruction of these goods in performances known as ‘battles’. Demonised by the media, we set out to explore what makes these practices meaningful to the participants themselves. On the basis of in-depth interviews conducted with the members of one group, we bring to the academic literature a scarcely analysed phenomenon that is nevertheless an acknowledged element of popular youth culture in contemporary South Africa. We attempt to place the practice of i'khothane within the context of the patterns of conspicuous consumption that have emerged in (a highly unequal) post-apartheid South Africa. While the practice of burning expensive consumer goods in public may seem alien, especially in contrast to the impoverished surroundings within which the i'khothane live, there are discernable and understandable reasons why the subculture has gained both popularity and notoriety. We show how the practice of i'khothane is a potent means of articulating youth identity in settings seemingly left behind by the ‘new’ South Africa.

“We're all finding places”: ILM-SA and middle-class, Indian, Muslim women in post-apartheid South Africa

abstractThis profile focuses on the Institute for Learning and Motivation – South Africa (ILM-SA) and its (co)founder Fatima Asmal's work as a community organiser and activist. Fatima is a public figure, Muslim community activist, journalist, producer of a recent documentary on Muslim Identity in South Africa, and founder of community organisation ILM-SA in Durban. ILM-SA provides an interesting lens through which to consider middle-class Indian Muslim identities in post-apartheid South Africa, as the organisation boldly and explicitly encourages (middle-class Indian) Muslims to live less insular lives, and also aims to promote inclusivity beyond the barriers of race and class. For ILM-SA and Fatima Asmal, Muslim women are often the key focus, and accomplished individuals are promoted in order to encourage Muslim women to actively participate in public life, within and beyond ‘the community’.This profile also explores ILM-SA and the views of Fatima Asmal, sometimes through contrast with other Muslim community organisations, in order to shed light on and ask preliminary questions around how her choices reveal, and give voice to, the possibilities and pathways available to Muslim women in post-apartheid Durban and South Africa. The author suggests that organisations such as ILM-SA offer a lens through which to see the (re)making of Durban's middle-class Indian Muslim community in post-apartheid South Africa.

India and its Diaspora: making sense of Hindu identity in South Africa

Indian immigrants to South Africa in the late nineteenth century differed in terms of their origins, motivations, belief systems, customs, and practices from the indigenous African population as well as from the ruling white settler elite. It is within this context that this paper interrogates some of the ways in which several generations of (Indian) Hindus constructed and continue to (re)construct their religious identities in South Africa. Data for this study were achieved by administering face-to-face questionnaires to 66 individuals in the Metropolitan Area of Durban in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The sample (selected through snowball sampling) comprised third to fifth generation Indians belonging to the four major language groups (Tamil, Telegu, Gujarati, and Hindi) residing in South Africa. Following the questionnaire responses, interviews were conducted with a selected number of respondents from the same sample. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS while analysis of qualitative data followed a thematic model.

The contest for Reformed identity in South Africa during the church struggle against apartheid

In this essay I examine the way in which Reformed identity became a site of struggle in South Africa amongst churches with a Reformed ethos during the years following the Cottesloe Conference in 1960, and remained so until the ending of apartheid. The essay is divided into three parts roughly corresponding to the three decades between 1960 and 1990. In the first part the focus is largely on the NGK as it was perceived both from the outside and within its own ranks. In the second part the focus is on the emergence of an alternative, more ecumenical Reformed identity which challenged the hegemony of the NGK as representative of the Reformed tradition. In the third part the focus is on how this alternative Reformed identity consolidated its character and at the same time was increasingly acknowledged within sections of the NGK preparing the way for the changes that would happen in South Africa after 1994.

On becoming and remaining a teacher: rethinking strategies for developing teacher professional identity in South Africa

The paper is based on interviews with a sample of 200 teachers from the Limpopo province about their life histories, particularly those aspects related to their choice of teaching as their first career path, and their expectations, experiences and perceptions in this regard. It argues that current approaches to teacher education in South Africa require a paradigm shift to integrate the transposition of knowledge and skills required in teaching with strategies to enable teachers to navigate through the complex processes through which shared meaning about the teaching profession is negotiated in order to develop and consolidate teacher identity. If this dimension remains neglected, current strategies proposed by the National Planning Commission and the Department of Basic Education are doomed to failure. While this is implicit in the notion of ‘teacher education’ vis-à-vis ‘teacher training’, apart from few and limited experiments, it has not yet gained substance in actual teacher development practice in South Africa.

‘Doing’ and ‘Using’ Sexual Orientation: The Role of Gay Male Pornographic Film in the Identity Construction of Gay Men

ABSTRACT The taken-for-granted dominance of heteronormativity in contemporary society has been well documented and critiqued in several social science studies. Acutely aware of its fragility and vulnerability (Butler 1991), its proponents constantly seek to reinforce its hegemonic influence through ritualised performances associated with ‘doing’, ‘using’ and performing gender and sexual orientation. The article will provide a theoretical contemplation on whether both the proscriptive and negotiable nature of gender roles can be applied to themes associated with gay male identity in South Africa. This will be done by emphasising the manner in which gay men may possibly ‘do’ and ‘use’ their sexual orientation (cf. Dowsett et al. 2008) through viewing pornography produced in predominantly the United States as well as South Africa. It will be argued that this mirroring of ‘doing’ and ‘using’ sexual orientation facilitated through gay male pornography is evident in three interrelated dimensions of the construction of gay men's gendered and/or sexual self – these being intrapsychic, interpersonal and cultural.

Looking from South Africa to the World: A Story of Identity for our Times

The article is a consideration of the question of identity in South Africa, and also in a global context. Just as South Africa has looked to the world in order to understand its place, so too the world might look to South Africa to illuminate patterns less immediately visible elsewhere. Far from being unrepresentative in the apartheid period, South Africa was the ‘state of exception’ that incarnated and concentrated global realities; equally in the current era the reciprocal relations between the South African and the global evoke haunting concerns. The article begins with a consideration of the ‘classic’ generation of anti-apartheid activists, including figures such as Nelson Mandela and Bram Fischer, as they fashioned a new sense of South African identity. Yet it goes on to consider what happens when the classic period is over, and older definitions and oppositions are no longer available. Here the navigations of fiction, both in South Africa and elsewhere, become significant, and the article examines the work of writers from Gordimer, Coetzee and Ndebele, to Caryl Phillips and W. G. Sebald. It ends with a contemplation of the current period, nearly twenty years after the democratic transition in South Africa. In the era of the Marikana massacre and other pressing developments, both music and fiction open up some of the ambiguities and obligations. Drawing on Agamben, I suggest the intrinsic mutuality of the ‘home’ and the ‘foreign’ in establishing a more promising—and challenging—sense of belonging and identity both in South Africa and the world.

Societal power shifts and changing social identities in South Africa: workplace implications

The enormous social, economic and political transformation South Africans have experienced especially over the past 12 years, since the systematic dismantling of apartheid in the era of social and economic reconstruction, has brought about numerous societal and social identity changes. Due to these changes in social identity, societal norms and power shifts, major changes are occurring in the workplace, and societal level identity crises and conflicts are increasingly spilling over into the workplace. This article unpacks these social identity changes and power shifts on the political, social, economic and management levels, by employing social identity theory, self-categorisation theory and embedded intergroup theory, and highlights some resultant workplace implications.

"Power, resistance and culture in the construction of NPO identity in South Africa"

In this paper we question how managerialism, as a central organizing principle of neo-liberal capitalism, is adopted and resisted in non-profit organizations (NPOs) in South Africa and the impact t...

“Stop Acting Black!”: Black Conscious (Racial) Identities in Coconut

Whenever Ofilwe, a black character in the novel Coconut, and her family are told by white customers at restaurants, shopping malls, and other public spaces to stop acting black, Ofilwe in particular becomes perplexed by what it means to black. She will rhetorically ask: are not Concerning race, this kind of encounter is a reification of an existing difference in the conceptualization of between the interlocutors. Ofilwe's obvious puzzlement is based on the fact that she identifies herself within the apartheid frame of racial categorization which placed people into categories of white, Asian, colored, and African (black) on the bases of reputation and appearance (Marx 105). For Ofilwe, at least in this context, one belongs to the he/she appears to fit into. Racial identity is not determined by ways of behavior. Consequently, it is impossible for one to act race, to act black. To her white interlocutors however, in the milieu of apartheid South Africa, does not necessarily concern the phenotype of a person. It shows a political and/or economic relationship among groups of people where the binaries of the superior and the subordinate could be acted. What this means is that one could become white on the basis of an admissible reputation and a behavior considered typical of that status. To be precise, a black person who is accepted into a white status is required to exhibit a behavior fully purged of the inferiority of his/her black origin.In his assessment of racial performativity, Ian Hacking observes that human acts come into being hand in hand with our invention of the [racial] categories labeling them (Qtd in Appiah 78). This includes the construction of racial identities based on a way of behavior presumed to mark out one's race. It is for this reason that we expect people of a certain to behave a certain way not simply because they are confirming to the script for that identity, performing that role, but because they have certain antecedent properties that are consequences of the label's properly applying to them4 (Appiah 79). The antecedent property in Ofilwe's encounter is her black racial inferiority and subservience assessed in relation to white superiority and hegemony. Apart from explaining the underlying power relations based on which racial classifications are constructed, the narrative from Coconut providing the context for my introductory comments here problematizes racial identity in South Africa. For example, what exactly does the Ofilwe's brother, Tshepo, mean when he says: All I am saying is that my skin is black? (Matlwa 5). In other words, does having a black-colored skin make one also racially Also, how are to understand another black character like Fikile who declares her desire to be white? (Matlwa 135). Does her identity change from black to white on the basis of the disavowal of her black self?The task of this paper is to provide an analysis of racial identity formations in post apartheid South Africa through the medium of Coconut. Careful not to cause any undue mutilation of the work of fiction by insisting on it being both universal and race-free (Morrison 12), I propose to use the South African philosophy, Black Consciousness (hereafter BC), to offer a reading of racial identity which is specific to the setting of the novel. As a current literary expression on the issue of and racial relations in South Africa, I will be much concerned with looking at how BC offers a theoretical framework for understanding the idea of racial in the post-apartheid space fictionalized in the story. I will look at how BC's (re)classification of race into white, non-white, and blacks, offers an alternative method for rethinking in Coconut.Coconut is the debut novel of the black female South African writer Kapano Matlwa. Published in the year 2007, the story revolves around a middle-class black family living in a white suburb in post apartheid South Africa. …

Queer knowledge and the politics of the gaze in contemporary South African photography: Zanele Muholi and others

This article is concerned chiefly with work by the contemporary South African lesbian photographer and activist Zanele Muholi, drawing some comparisons with photographs by Sabelo Mlangeni and Lunga Kama. All of these photographers are concerned with the visibility of sexual minorities, the politics of the gaze, the construction of archives, the role of photography that is activist, and the generation of new ideas about community and citizenship. Muholi's work, in particular, speaks to tensions between the body politic and the biopolitics of the black body, the autochthonous subject of tradition and the queer agent of utopian possibility. In teasing out some of the complexities of these tensions and their implications for audiences of the photographs, this article considers thematic concerns and formal attributes of a number of works. It interrogates, too, their implications for thinking about queer futurity in the postcolony, and what their reception reveals about the judgement – and tolerance – of the new custodians of national cultural identities in South Africa.

Die Antwoord and a delegitimised South African whiteness: a potential counter-narrative?

This article explores the potential for the ostensibly marginal discourse of Afrikaans zef rap rave, as performed by Die Antwoord, to present a meaningful ‘counter-narrative of nation’ (Bhabha 1994: 300) within a South African context in which ‘being “white” is replete with dissonance’ (Steyn 2004: 122). Die Antwoord is an Afrikaans zef-rap-rave band who are ‘taking over the interweb’ and have garnered a fair-sized fan-base both on the Internet and through live gigs. The band's image is ‘zef’ or ‘common’, making use of an amalgamation of ‘white trash’ and ‘Cape coloured gangster’ signifiers. This, however, is a carefully crafted appropriation of a particular mix of marginalised South African identities and, as such, offers fruitful material for analysis. In order to explore whether Die Antwoord does in fact suggest new narrative strategies that are able to simultaneously construct, resist, maintain and challenge dominant discourses of white identity in South Africa, this article attempts, first, to briefly situate Die Antwoord within a broader historical framework of alternative music production, and second, to examine the performance of the band from within the discourse of ‘critical whiteness studies’. Finally, the performance and lyrics of Die Antwoord are explored in light of the strategies of irony and the carnivalesque, in order to suggest whether they do in fact offer a ‘counter-narrative of nation’ or if they merely reinforce dominant discourses of white South African identity.

Whiteness, racism, and Afrikaner identity in post-apartheid South Africa

This article explores the production of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity in South Africa. Centred around the private sphere of the braai, the article draws on discursive psychology to investigate the participants’ dilemmas and struggles over their identity as Afrikaners, South Africans, and Africans, and the ways in which these identities are being redefined. The ‘backstage’ talk that is usually reserved for fellow whites or Afrikaners illustrates a clear difference between public and private constructions of Afrikaner identity. While the participants rejected many stereotypes of Afrikaner identity, they simultaneously recycled key discourses underlying apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black incompetence and whites under threat. Participants generally claimed status as ‘Africans’ but strongly resisted assimilation with ‘Africa’ or a broader African identity. The article concludes that the construction of the Afrikaner community as embattled and systematically oppressed might provide powerful support for extremism. IN NOVEMBER 2010 THE AFRIKAANS AUTHOR Annelie Botes shocked South Africa when she said in an interview: ‘I don’t like black people [Ek hou nie van swartmense nie].’ She went on to say that ‘In my formative years in Uniondale there were no black people. If one was walking around it was a trespassing crook. And then you must run, because he’s going to catch you [In my grootwordjare op Uniondale was daar geen swartmense nie. As daar een rondloop, was dit ‘n bandiet wat dros. En dan moet jy hardloop, want hy gaan jou vang].’ Throwing caution to the winds she went on: ‘I know they’re just people like me. I know they have the same rights as me. But I don’t understand them. And then... I don’t like them. I avoid them *Cornel Verwey is a practising clinical psychologist working in Cape Town, South Africa, and was affiliated with the University of KwaZulu-Natal at the time that this research took place. Michael Quayle (quaylem@ukzn.ac.za) is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the School of Applied Human Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal. The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their very helpful suggestions. 1. Hanlie Retief, ‘Hanlie gesels met Annelie Botes’, Rapport, 20 November 2010, (2 March 2011). African Affairs, 111/445, 551–575 doi: 10.1093/afraf/ads056 © The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal African Society. All rights reserved

JAWI DARI JAUH

This article explores the jawi written tradition of the Muslim Community of Cape Town, South Africa, as both a legacy of Indonesians sent to the Cape of Good Hope from the 17th to the 19th centuries, and as a tool for the renewed expression of Malay-Indonesian identities in South Africa. It traces the origins and development of jawi literacy in Cape Town and discusses the contemporary use of remnant jawi texts in activities based around heritage, identity and genealogical projects. In focusing on jawi text, the article illuminates significant broader contextual issues, including the development of the so-called ‘Malay’ community of Cape Town, the historical presence of Indonesians in South Africa, and contemporary political and economic links between the Malay-Indonesian world and South Africa.

The Multiple Meanings of Coloured Identity in South Africa

In post-1994, South African identity has taken centre stage in debates about diversity and its impact in a multicultural society. The coloured people of South Africa seem to have the most at stake in such debates due to the perceived ambiguity of their and others’ perceptions of their identity. This article interrogates the symbology of colouredness by providing a symbolic interpretation of the meanings of the symbols of coloured identity. Through the engagement with relevant literature, the article seeks to identify the symbols of coloured identity and the multivocality of these symbols. Our argument is that a symbological approach to coloured identity opens up possibilities for a variety of meanings that move beyond the historically inherited stereotypical associations with the identity. AFRICA INSIGHT Vol 42 (1) – June 2012

Memory and Identity in South Africa: Contradictions and Ambiguities in the Process of Post-apartheid Memorialization

The article explores commemorative markers as containers of intangible heritage in post-apartheid South Africa, with special reference to the case study of the Duncan Village Massacre memorial that was unveiled in 2008 in the Buffalo City Municipality (Eastern Cape) in memory of the victims of the so-called Duncan Village Massacre of August 1985. This event is an example of many similar cases of apartheid-era township violence, where state security forces shot and killed members of a protesting community crowd; and the memorial is an example of many similar commemorative markers that have been installed under the aegis of the national post-apartheid government since 1994. After considering the historical background of the Duncan Village Massacre and the significance of the way in which it is now being commemorated, the article traces the process of the memorial's production, installation and public reception, considering in particular the issue of community consultation and the role of heritage in development. It is argued that the memorial is not only a symbol of anti-apartheid resistance, as intended, but also a symbol of the contradictions that characterize the post-apartheid nation; which raises serious questions about the preservation of cultural heritage and the trans-generational transfer of memory and oral history in a specific African context.