Requiring Respect: Searching for Non-Racialism in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Abstract

Non-racialism is a central tenet of the post-apartheid nation-building project located at the heart of the South African Constitution. However, race remains a core discourse in the political and popular lexicon, acting as a key marker through which individual and collective identities, of selves and others, are constructed. Utilising focus group data from across South Africa, this article contends that the failure to clearly define the Constitution's founding tenet of ‘non-racialism’ is reflected in citizens’ uncertain engagements with the contested terrain of race, identity and belonging in post-apartheid South Africa. Layered onto this concern is a sense that citizens are concerned with the realisation of the conditions for self-respect and reciprocal relations of respect as the precursor to a more equitable society.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank David Everatt for his support and comments, the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation for their invitation to participate in this project, and the paper's peer reviewers for their comments.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Hammett

Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK; Department of Geography, University of the Free State, South Africa.