South African Nation Research Articles

‘Africa's Tournament'? The Branding Legacy of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™

In 2010, South Africa became the first country on the African continent to host the FIFA World Cup. Crucially the hosting of such a prestigious tournament was seen as a chance to prove that this developing nation could host an event of this magnitude as efficiently as the developed economies who had hosted the previous editions of the event, such as Germany in 2006 and Korea and Japan in 2002. Significantly though, this flagship event was also promoted by FIFA as ‘Africa's Tournament' with South Africa encouraged to share the identity and success of 2010 with the entire African continent. Based on the findings from in-depth interviews conducted with event and destination stakeholders from national and regional South African Government departments, this article explores the 2010 tournament as a branding opportunity that was used to promote both the continent of Africa as well as the South African nation. Expanding upon previous studies in this area the challenges and successes of hosting the 2010 World Cup are examined as is the role of mega-events such as the 2010 FIFA World Cup in generating a nation and continent-wide branding legacy. Stakeholders specialising in sport event management, tourism, operations and communications reflect on the branding and exposure for both Africa and South Africa achieved as a result of the event and the degree to which this was coordinated and co-created between various stakeholders. Insights are also given as to the degree to which the branding gains achieved during the event have been leveraged post-2010. As such, this article offers an original socio-historic perspective on existing studies examining the impact of the 2010 tournament.

National Citizens, Global Economies: Sarah Gertrude Millin and the Professionalization of Envy

This article examines the South African novelist Sarah Gertrude Millin’s writings on economics. Though Millin has most commonly been treated as a theorist of race and miscegenation, her novels and nonfiction writings demonstrate an equally strong interest in how global economic institutions affect South African life. Eatough proposes that Millin’s fascination with such diverse economic practices as currency speculation, actuarial accounting, and stock broking stems from the way in which these practices dramatize a seemingly insuperable tension between Anglo professionalism and South African nationalism. As the article shows, Millin’s efforts to overcome Anglo-Afrikaner rivalry and fashion a unified white nationalism entailed a radical rethinking of what global professional networks were in their innermost essence. Central to this nationalist project, Eatough argues, was Millin’s tendency to regard such networks less as rooted national institutions than as distant speculative devices capable of inflating the value of South African nationality. Over the course of the article, Eatough investigates how Millin uses this definition to finesse complaints by (primarily Afrikaner) nationalists against British control of the professions by suggesting that such articulations of envy drive speculative enterprise—and, thus, provide a means for transforming national abjection into national value.

A Comparative Analysis Of Immigrants And Natives Occupational Attainment In Post-Apartheid South Africa

This study investigates the occupational status of South African natives and immigrants, considering the intersection between race and nativity. Using census data for 2001, the study finds that whites dominate the top end of the occupational distribution, while the reverse is the case for Africans, irrespective of nativity. Thus, in post-Apartheid South Africa, race explains more of an individuals occupational status than country of origin the legacy of apartheid still lingers on. The study also finds that South African-born Africans are more likely to compete for the same occupations with African immigrants from non-SADC countries than those from SADC countries. To some extent, this violates the claim that African immigrants from SADC countries steal natives jobs.

PAUL, HERMENEUTICS AND CHARACTER: IMPLICATIONS FOR SCRIPTURE AND IDENTITY

The Bible as foundational document and as important source of identity in the Christian tradition and its religious communities, and its contribution to the formation of the identity of certain forms of culture and literature, is considered from the perspective of “enscripturalised identity”. The point of departure is the Pauline perspective on identity, which is introduced against the broader context of notions of identity in the first century CE. From Paul’s insistence on the new identity of the followers of Christ, the focus is turned to how his insistence upon a new hermeneutic characterised by freedom correlates with the new identity in Christ, resulting in an embodied hermeneutic and a self-understanding developed from Scripture. In a second part of the study, enscripturalised identity is considered with regard to contemporary, multicultural South Africa, amidst the attempt to forge a sense of common vision and character. Affirming the close links between religion and notions of identity, the particular value of the relationship between Scripture and identity in Africa is considered. It is concluded that notions of identity advocated by Paul should be understood in reciprocal relationship to his foundational scriptures, and that enscripturalised identity will be ignored at peril when reflecting on the general character of the South African rainbow nation. 1. Introducing enscripturalised identity

FIXING FAMILIES THROUGH TELEVISION?

Television has played a central role as a tool through which to imagine and re-imagine the South African nation, family and selfhood, and to ‘fix’ these same categories. From the apartheid state's blacking out of healthy everyday life images of black families, through the efforts of founding a ‘new’ nation using the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to modern day therapeutic talk shows, television has progressively placed less salience on the ‘nation’ and more on family and interpersonal relationships within this social unit. Self-disclosure on television, especially through a talk show significantly called Relate, ironically reveals and occludes legacies of class and racial differentiations with their attendant socio-economic imbalances. Talking about personal affect to ‘fix’ one's problems on national television emerges as an instrumental undertaking that appears to benefit guests to the show but perhaps not as much as it does the production company and South African Broadcasting Corporation, suggesting that the participants are being exploited. Be that as it may, Relate emerges as an exercise in the interiorization of control, as well as an invitation to undertake serious dialogue about interpersonal intimacy.

Een warm welkom voor blanke nieuwkomers? Nederlandse emigratie en Zuid-Afrikaanse natievorming (1902-1961)

This article examines the dynamics between European emigration and the South African immigration policy and nation building in the years 1902-1961. It investigates changing ideas and regulations that promoted or impeded transnational mobility of certain national and ethnic categories of ’white’ migrants from Europe to South Africa, and it shows how Dutch emigration fitted into this pattern. A pattern that was determined by a controversy between advocates of an inclusive policy that aimed at opening up the country to white immigrants from all over Europe, and those who were in favour of an exclusive policy that was primarily concerned with strengthening their ‘own’ Protestant, Afrikaans political culture (protecting it from British, Jewish, and catholic influences). When the Dutch government found it necessary to stimulate Dutch emigration, it called on the alleged ‘kinship’ (stamverwantschap) between Dutch and Afrikaner part of the South African population to overcome the obstacles.Dutch newcomers soon were welcomed again to strengthen Afrikaner nationalism and thus support the Apartheid regime.

The portraits of Simon van der Stel, first governor of the Cape

In the identification of portraits, often the wish is father to the thought. This is a tendency that is strikingly illustrated by the identification of a pair of Dirck Craey portraits from 1650, one of which was held until recently to be the official likeness of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, and the other that of his first wife, Maria Quevellerius (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). The portrait expert Jonkheer F.G.L.O. van Kretschmar has denied the identity of the subjects on convincing grounds; indeed, he has demonstrated how this tendency played its part in the identification of these portraits in the past. 1 In the first place, it played its part in the minds of the 18th century owners of the portrait collection that included the two paintings. The owners wished to feel that they had in their possession an unbroken sequence of ancestral portraits, and so they furnished these two paintings with labels and coats of arms accordingly. Subsequently, the same tendency was shown by certain South African historians. Against a background of growing nationalism in South Africa, especially following the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 and the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, these historians began to take an interest in the long neglected founder of the South African nation. Gradually, their interest in Van Riebeeck turned into something very much like a cult, in which Maria Quevellerius was cast in the role of a mother of the fatherland, and along with which there went a deep-seated and justifiable wish for portraits of the founder and his wife. In such a euphoria of nationalist sentiment the identification of the Craey portraits was not conducted with too many scruples.

The portraits of Simon van der Stel, first governor of the Cape

In the identification of portraits, often the wish is father to the thought. This is a tendency that is strikingly illustrated by the identification of a pair of Dirck Craey portraits from 1650, one of which was held until recently to be the official likeness of the founder of the Cape Colony, Jan van Riebeeck, and the other that of his first wife, Maria Quevellerius (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). The portrait expert Jonkheer F.G.L.O. van Kretschmar has denied the identity of the subjects on convincing grounds; indeed, he has demonstrated how this tendency played its part in the identification of these portraits in the past. 1 In the first place, it played its part in the minds of the 18th century owners of the portrait collection that included the two paintings. The owners wished to feel that they had in their possession an unbroken sequence of ancestral portraits, and so they furnished these two paintings with labels and coats of arms accordingly. Subsequently, the same tendency was shown by certain South African historians. Against a background of growing nationalism in South Africa, especially following the Peace of Vereeniging in 1902 and the establishment of the Union of South Africa in 1910, these historians began to take an interest in the long neglected founder of the South African nation. Gradually, their interest in Van Riebeeck turned into something very much like a cult, in which Maria Quevellerius was cast in the role of a mother of the fatherland, and along with which there went a deep-seated and justifiable wish for portraits of the founder and his wife. In such a euphoria of nationalist sentiment the identification of the Craey portraits was not conducted with too many scruples.

English

  Domestic work is one of the few employment opportunities open to poor and often uneducated men and women. With few formal jobs available and facing gender discrimination, often coupled with discrimination based on race or ethnicity, options for decent work or wage are few. This paper investigates domestic workers minimum wage in relation to Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997. The ongoing demand for domestic services urged researchers to ask the question, whether domestic workers are being paid accordingly. Sectoral guidelines prescribe minimum wage regulations per area; data on the other hand suggest that employers are non-compliant and domestic workers are unaware of their basic right to minimum wage. Furthermore, there is a noted discrepancy in pay per unit of time as workers increase the amount of time they work. Specifically, working is found to be significantly negatively correlated with pay rate. Research has also revealed that the misconception relating to foreign nationals being paid a different rate as compared to South African nationals is non-existent.   Key words: Domestic worker, minimum wage, Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997.

On the Development of Scientific Terminology in African Languages: The Terminographer's Dilemma in a New Dispensation

There currently exists a noticeable tension in South Africa between the political aim of one homogeneous South African nation on the one hand and the autonomy each language deserves in practice according to the constitution on the other. The real development of individual languages and the purposeful cultivation of language pride necessarily accentuate races and ethnical differences, which are contrary to the ideal of nation-building. Consequently, languages are subtly denied acknowledged constitutional rights in practice, which will impact negatively on the development of especially the African languages into technical and academic languages in their own right. The question thus arises whether it is sensible for the terminographer to develop scientific and technical terms for the African languages, while everything at this stage indicates that these terms will hardly, if ever, be used by subject specialists. <b>Keywords:</b> terminology, african languages, language attitudes, medium of instruction, language-teaching, linguistic awareness, language planning, language policy, multilingualism, nation-building, constitutional rights, harmonization, standard language, standard sotho, standard nguni, language boards, language academies, ethnicity, monolingual schools, radio services

Dystopian dreams from South Africa: Lauren Beukes's Moxyland and Zoo City

The central theoretical concept underpinning this article is Lyman Tower Sargent's notion of the ‘critical dystopian’ novel, which is not nihilistic, but which disrupts easy binarist classifications, and incorporates elements of opposition to oppression, as well as hope for a more egalitarian future. I examine critical dystopian dreaming as portrayed in two novels by Lauren Beukes, Moxyland (2008) and Zoo City (2010), both set in South Africa, and I connect the concerns explored within these novels to the current mood of the South African nation. Moxyland, which employs techniques of the dystopian, cyberpunk and slipstream, delineates a technological, materialistic alternative society which mirrors and intensifies the structural violence of the present. Zoo City was the recipient of the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award, a British award presented to the best science fiction novel published in the United Kingdom in the previous year. In this dystopian text, billed as a ‘muti (or indigenous medicine) noir’ novel, Beukes interestingly indigenises the concept of the animal daemon which she adapts from Philip Pullman.

‘I don’t know what I am’: the end of Afrikaner nationalism in post-apartheid South Africa

Afrikaner nationalism achieved notoriety for its power and dominance of the political life of the South African state for much of the latter half of the 20th century. Nearly two decades on from the first democratic elections, in South Africa in 1994, Afrikaner nationalism is a spent force and the question is how to explain its decline. In this article it is argued that one has to look beyond historical and political accounts that focus on the structural factors that enable nationalism and ethnicity. In narratives of the self, young Afrikaners give insights into the formation of identities and modes of existence and lifestyles, or processes of subjectivisation, that indicate the cultural reasons for political actions. Increasing wealth in a growing consumer society has led to the formation of individual identities no longer contained with an ethno-nationalist framework. With the legacy of having contributed to, and benefited from apartheid, young Afrikaners are seeing the possibilities that come with a new, emerging South African nation but also face the challenge of coming to terms with feelings of loss and exclusion. While the cracks of a racist enclosure are widening, the opening of the apartheid mind is still a work in progress.

‘Great and lasting service to this country’: Sir Leander Starr Jameson, conciliation and the Unionist Party, 1910-1912

The Jameson Raid of December 1895 estranged the two white groups in South Africa and contributed to the outbreak of the South African War of 1899-1902. With the rise of Afrikaner nationalism in the twentieth century the perception that L.S. Jameson (1853-1917) was the cause of all tension and rivalry between the two white groups became entrenched. And yet, Jameson as leader of the Unionist Party between 1910 and 1912 did his utmost to atone for the damage done by his reckless Raid. He publicly lauded Botha’s ability and integrity and this played a crucial role in diluting the anti-Afrikaner attitude of many English-speakers, convincing them to accept an Afrikaner dominated government. In addition his encouragement of a South African identity within the Empire, and his restraint on the anger and opposition to bilingualism by English-speakers supported Botha’s conciliation and nation building policies. Jameson helped to lay the foundation of a South African nation within the British Empire.Keywords: L.S. Jameson (1853-1917), Unionist Party, Jameson Raid, conciliation. Union of South Africa, South African War, British Empire, South AfricanismDisciplines: History, Political Studies

Some Reflections on Reparation in Post-Apartheid South Africa, using a Couple Therapy Intervention as a Microcosm of South African Society

The paper addresses the question of reparation in post-apartheid South Africa. The central hypothesis of the paper is that in South Africa current traumas or losses, such as the 2008 xenophobic attacks, may activate a ‘shared unconscious phantasy’ of irreparable damage inflicted by apartheid on the collective psyche of the South African nation which could block constructive engagement and healing. A brief couple therapy intervention by a white therapist with a black couple is used as a ‘microcosm’ to explore this question. The impact of an extreme current loss, when earlier losses have been sustained, is explored. Additionally, the impact of racial difference on the transference and countertransference between the therapist and the couple is explored to illustrate factors complicating the productive grieving and working through of the depressive position towards reparation.

‘If you are hungry, and a man promises you mealies, will you not follow him?’ South African Swazi Ethnic Nationalism, 1931–1986

On a cold winter's day in June 1986, David Lukhele (a cabinet minister in the former KaNgwane) was gunned down mercilessly in his home by members of Umkhonto we Sizwe's elite ‘elimination’ unit. He was assassinated for his fervent defence of the apartheid government's 1982 plan to cede KaNgwane (and Ingwavuma) to Swaziland, and for mobilising – against the ANC's broader African nationalism – an unrepentantly chauvinistic Swazi ethnic nationalism deferential to ‘incorporation’ under King Sobhuza and Swaziland. Yet, the very same David Lukhele had, in 1973, come under government surveillance for mobilising landless chiefs in the Transvaal against a South African Swazi identity subservient to Sobhuza and Swaziland. This dramatic reversal in the politics of David Lukhele indexes the volatility of South African Swazi ethno-politics over the course of the twentieth century. From its beginnings in Sophiatown in 1931 to its deathly denouement in 1986, South African Swazi nationalism cultivated ethnic identification as a particularly fertile conjunctural politics of land, custom, and chiefly authority, instantiated interestingly by the insistent yearning for a Bantustan.

Towards an alternative take on language activism: A South African case study

It has been claimed that language activism could serve as a barometer of the general social condition of the (civically defined) South African nation (Du Plessis 2006, 89). The argument in this article is that language activism in the country continues to be what it always has been (here and elsewhere): a barometer of ethno-linguistic vitality/mobilised ethnicity/ethnic nationalism. Proceeding from the premise that activism implies the endorsement of a political philosophy/ideology, I demonstrate how the views held by prominent white Afrikaans language activists are essentially nationalist views. The challenge facing these activists, I argue, is to defend their positions with explicit reference to existing philosophical/ideological paradigms other than liberalism (for their appeals tend to be illiberal). The scholarly focus, in turn, should shift from describing and prescribing language activism to providing an explanation for the phenomenon.

Identity and Belonging in Post-Apartheid South Africa: The Case of Indian South Africans

This paper examines Indian identities in the post-apartheid period, focusing in particular on the vexed issues of identity and belonging. The inauguration of Nelson Mandela as President of a non-racial democratic South Africa on 10 May 1994 denoted the de-territorialisation of old apartheid racial identities. Race separateness was no longer codified in law and common citizenship was meant to glue all into a South African nation. The process has been far from simple as 'Indian' identity has been constructed, deconstructed and re-made over the years. A central dynamic of this process has been the tension between the way the state has tried to define identity. In the post- apartheid period too, there is unraveling of Indian identities in response to external factors such as the rise of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) in India, the struggle of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and the Global War on Terror, while the state continues to play an interventionist role through its race-based affirmative action policies. All of this underscores tensions among Indians on how best to assert their belonging in Africa. As this article is being written there is a growing interest in the commemoration of 150 years since the arrival of Indian indentured labourers in South Africa in 1860. The present conjuncture opens possibilities to debate issues of identity and belonging. If access to resources continues to be defined exclusively by race then one can expect increasing frustration on the part of the poors who will most likely be susceptible to racial and ethnic overtures. On the other hand, the middle classes, living in the same gated communities and enjoying the same sports like cricket and golf, may witness bonding across racial lines. Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons, but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings (Said 1993: 7).

Legal Documents Relating to Land Reform in Zimbabwe

In Gramara (Private) Ltd. & Others v. Government of Zimbabwe & Others (‘‘Gramara’’)1 and Von Abo v. Government of South Africa (‘‘Von Abo’’),2 the legitimacy of Zimbabwe’s land reform program has once again come under the judicial microscope. In Gramara, Judge Patel of the Zimbabwean High Court refused to enforce a decision of the Southern African Development Community (‘‘SADC’’) Tribunal that declared the program inconsistent with a range of human rights protections. By contrast, in Von Abo, Judge Prinsloo of the South African High Court virulently condemned the South African government’s failure to afford the applicant farm-owner diplomatic protection in relation to the government of Zimbabwe’s confiscations of land owned by South African nationals. The decisions throw into sharp relief both the potential and the limitations of the application of international law in the domestic context.

Re-locating South African hip hop into global intercultural communication

ABSTRACT The founding ideology of modern South Africa followed a unique path that favoured the discourse of racial purity, exclusion of political rights for blacks and the silencing of black narratives justified in the phenomena of ‘separate development’, officially called the apartheid system in 1948. In response to these exclusive racial politics, Africans in South Africa, with significant assistance from African countries from the north, gained independence in 1994. However, as early as 1994, a new discourse of black South African racial nationalism was promoted, and it named some blacks from the north as ‘economic refugees’ or ‘foreign guests’ and the intensity of this exclucive language resulted in the xenophobic attacks on foreign blacks carried out by ordinary South Africans in 2008, with more or less white and black elite approval. More than 65 black lives were lost in the new crusade to purify South Africa of black foreign elements. However, the discourse of racial purity, engendered in the sort of narrow nationalism promoted by both white and black supremacists before and after 1994 has not gone unchallenged. In some popular music, black South Africans have problematise notions of ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘cultural diversity’, which underpin the liberal discourse of postapartheid South Africa. The tendency in some selected lyrics by black hip hop artists is to embrace ‘intercultural’ communication as a basis for renegotiating questions of identities in the context of the local and global crisis informed by residual ideologies of colonialism, apartheid, the Cold War and most recently, the War on Terror.

Lightning strikes twice: The 2007 Rugby World Cup and memories of a South African rainbow nation

This article deals with the shifting media discourses of nationalism in the South African media in relation to two victories in the Rugby World Cup (RWC) tournaments in 1995 and 2007 respectively. Through an analysis of discourse in three mainstream daily newspapers, the article seeks to establish how media attention to the South African team's performance in the 2007 RWC articulated changing notions of nationhood. While the dominant discourse in 1995 was that of reconciliation and the ‘rainbow nation’, played out on the rugby field, nationalism in 2007 seemed to be defined more in terms of ‘Africanness’ and transformation. The article maps this shift from ‘rainbow nation’ to ‘Africanness’ by examining key issues and topics that featured in three local mainstream newspapers in 2007, using theoretical concepts from Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. The argument is that commentators in the mainstream press were unable to move beyond their divisive discourses, even when evidence to the contrary emerged in the form of inclusive fever-pitch grass root support for the Springboks during RWC 2007. In closing, it is argued that the gap between popular perception/actions and political discourse in the media can be explained in terms of the fact that in the media rugby has become a symbol of the failure of the ‘nation-building’ rhetoric in the discourse of the African Renaissance.