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Abstract
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the ex-chairman of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), made international headlines when he announced that he would rather go to hell than worship a homophobic God. He further stated that he was as passionate about gay rights as he ever was about opposing apartheid. Tutu is not alone in promoting tolerance and openness to diversity in South Africa. Contemporary thinkers, writers, and poets are also striving to establish new moral topographies whose goals are to encourage an open society through forms of social solidarity that transcend race, gender, and religion. Njabulo Ndebele, Antjie Krog, Sarah Nuttall, Achille Mbembe among others, come to mind in this respect. This article examines this new mode of living, and argues that in South Africa, there is evidence of an emergent cosmopolitan landscape that seeks to deal with the legacies of apartheid and the challenges of an increasingly fractured, globalized world.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and Carli Coetzee for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions.
Notes
1. Sadly, we can hardly discuss this gracious theoretical gesture from Mbeki without mentioning his ignoble nativist rhetoric in the debates about HIV/AIDS in South Africa, especially the correspondence between him, the president of South Africa, and Tony Leon between 7 July and 5 August 2000.
2. I discuss Nuttall's and Krog's ideas more fully in the subsequent sections.
3. For my explanation of transcultural affinity I borrow Goethe's concept of elective affinity. Elective Affinity is the English translation of Goethe's novel Die Wahlverwandschaften published in Citation1809. It tells the story of a couple, Eduard and Charlotte, who invite Captain (Eduard's boyhood friend), and Ottilie (the orphaned niece of Charlotte) into their routine family life. When Captain and Ottilie move in with Eduard and Charlotte, mutual personal chemistry engenders a series of love affairs that changes their lives. Goethe took the title from chemistry and the knowledge that certain chemical elements readily bond with others. Goethe declared that his novel is one of manners and social values. Given that Eduard and Charlotte broke established codes of behaviour within their social class in their relations with Captain and Ottilie, Goethe suggests that elements (humans) with innate affinities (love) will elect to bond together regardless of established social norms or manners.