Critical Nostalgias in Democratic South Africa

ABSTRACT

Evidence suggests that some black residents in South Africa experience nostalgia for the racist and authoritarian apartheid regime. What dynamics generate apartheid nostalgia, and what work does it do? This article draws on in-depth interviews with black residents of impoverished urban townships and informal settlements. I argue that by eliminating formal racial discrimination and redirecting popular aspirations towards the state, South Africa’s democratic transition encouraged apartheid nostalgia, which residents deployed to criticize the post-apartheid state and imagine alternative possibilities. Far from uniform, nostalgic expressions focused on four objects: social protection, migrant exclusion, bureaucratic integrity, and white governance. Each object represented an aspect of the apartheid state that residents sought to resurrect. The analysis calls for a shift from a politics of regret, focused on shame for past atrocities, to a politics of nostalgia, which understands idealized projections of past objects as a terrain of struggle.

KEYWORDS:

• Nostalgia
• democratization
• development
• immigration
• racism
• memory

Acknowledgments

Excellent research assistance from Nhlakanipo Lukhele, and support from the Center for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, made this research possible. I am grateful for valuable feedback provided by Jennifer Jones, Carin Runciman, Zachary Levenson, Joshua Rivkin, three anonymous reviewers, and participants in two seminars held at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (Chicago, 2015) and the University of Johannesburg (2016).