Achille Mbembe: Non-racialism and the New Native Question in South Africa

Blind to colour - or just blind?

Achille Mbembe, The Mail & Guardian

Born out of the crucible of the struggle against apartheid, the idea of nonracialism is arguably one of South Africa’s most potent contributions to modern political thought and practice.

At its most utopian, nonracialism gestures towards a future when the structures of racism will be dismantled and all forms of racial injury and trauma will be healed.

Zuma and Zulu nationalism

Zuma has skillfully used Zulu or African ‘traditions’ to cover-up poor personal choices, indiscretions and wrong behavior, and portrayed those who oppose such poor behavior of being opposed to African ‘traditions’ or ‘culture,’ argues William Gumede.

For most of the 100 years of the ANC’s history, two distinct strands of Zulu nationalism competed for dominance in the ANC, but especially in the KwaZulu Natal wing of the party, the one conservative, and more closed-off, the other, progressive and more inclusive of other communities.

‘Wash Me Black Again’: African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and KwaZulu Natal, 1944-1960

by Jon Soske, PhD Thesis

My dissertation combines a critical history of the Indian diaspora’s political and intellectual impact on the development of African nationalism in South Africa with an analysis of African/Indian racial dynamics in Natal. Beginning in the 1940s, tumultuous debates among black intellectuals over the place of the Indian diaspora in Africa played a central role in the emergence of new and antagonistic conceptualizations of a South African nation. The writings of Indian political figures (particularly Gandhi and Nehru) and the Indian independence struggle had enormous influence on a generation of African nationalists, but this impact was mediated in complex ways by the race and class dynamics of Natal. During the 1930s and 40s, rapid and large-scale urbanization generated a series of racially-mixed shantytowns surrounding Durban in which a largely Gujarati and Hindi merchant and landlord class provided the ersatz urban infrastructure utilized by both Tamil-speaking workers and Zulu migrants. In Indian-owned buses, stores, and movie theatres, a racial hierarchy of Indian over African developed based on the social grammars of property, relationship with land, family structure, and different gender roles. In such circumstances, practices integral to maintaining diasporic identities — such as religious festivals, marriage, caste (jati), language, and even dress and food—became signifiers of ranked status and perceived exclusion. Despite the destruction of this urban landscape by forced removals beginning in the late 1950s, these social relationships powerfully shaped African and Indian identities in Natal, the popular memory of different communities, and the later politics of the anti-apartheid struggle.

Engage notions of race, non-racialism, Africanism

by Raymond Suttner, The Daily Dispatch

IN CURRENT public discourse "race", "playing the race card", "re-racialisation", "elections as a ‘racial census’" are often heard. Many commentators object to the continued reference to black or white. Mention of race is claimed to be antagonistic to the principle of non-racialism which is constitutionally entrenched.

Many suggest that the sooner we move away from "racial thinking" the better and the swifter will we implement the principle of non-racialism. The spirit of the World Cup where amity between the people of South Africa supposedly reigned is invoked against "race fixation".

Contested Indian Identity in Contemporary South Africa

by Imraan Buccus, SACSIS, 2010

One hundred and fifty years ago the first indentured Indians were brought to South Africa to work in sugar cane fields. They were soon joined by ‘passenger Indians’ who came of their own free will to trade.

The indentured Indians were not the first Indians to be brought to South Africa. On the contrary, a significant number of Indians were brought to the Cape Colony as slaves, but their descendents became part of the groups classified as White and Coloured under apartheid.

Of pretence and protest

Njabulu Ndebele, 2009, Mail & Guardian

At the end of his recent Mail & Guardian article, “In the rainbow nation, colour and class still count”, David Smith recalls “a cynic whispering” in his ear that’s not easy to forget: “The whites are pretending it didn’t happen; the blacks are pretending to forgive.” As I thought further about this, I concluded that, in the light of the interracial events Smith recalls in his article, there may in fact be a positive value to pretence.