South African complexities make any homogenous conclusion extremely challenging, writes Joel Netshitenzhe.
Among the vexed questions in the evolution of humanity’s systems of social organisation are issues of nation formation and social cohesion.
Nations date back centuries and have reflected different forms in various parts of the world and in different epochs.
More strictly organised as nation states, nations and their geographic configurations are associated with the industrial era and the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. The organisation of humanity into nations provides a functional utility to human relations.
Yet the notions of nation states, nationhood and citizenship – conferring a sense of belonging and exclusion, representing organisational forms around which endowments are appropriated, and reflecting markers of collective identities evoke emotion.
Indeed, in most parts of the world, blood was shed in building nations and in asserting their rights in relation to other nations.
This is even more acutely manifest in postcolonial polities, straddling the very acts of conquest and dispossession, imposition of geographic entities, enforcement of discriminatory policies, mobilisation for national emancipation and building of new societies.
Contained within these processes are ebbs and flows in self-definition and the evolution of identities. While mobilisation for a sense of nationhood contains within it a homogenising tendency, pride in the roots from which a variety of identities originate and the ordering of social status within a nation can have a centrifugal effect.
It is from this perspective that Mistra’s treatise on nation formation and social cohesion in South Africa is approached. Drawing from literature that defines nations as political, cultural, economic and territorial constructs, the study seeks to assess the extent to which South Africa satisfies the theoretical prerequisites to be a nation. This forms the foundation of our report’s assessment of the progress made since democracy.
In doing so, a hornet’s nest is stirred.
To what extent do South Africa’s people constitute a nation?
Do the erstwhile colonial settlers – who unlike in most other parts of the postcolonial world have decided in large numbers to make the country their permanent home – deserve equal recognition as members of the emergent nation?
Given the many languages, cultures, the legacy of racism and socioeconomic deprivation and varying political interests, how strong are the centripetal impulses; how have they played themselves out in the past 20 years and what are the prospects for the future?
In other words, the many complexities that characterise the challenge of nation formation find acute expression in South Africa.
Against this background, two issues arise which have informed the texture of our study. First, the various attributes that are identified to define a nation are inadequate; and they have to be combined with the more recent and somewhat diffuse notion of social cohesion which also embraces people’s dignity and welfare and the legitimacy of the state.
Second, nation formation and social cohesion can be assessed at a generic level, but the lived experience of ordinary citizens adds the kind of flavour macro-indicators can hardly capture.
Thus an actor-orientated approach was adopted, represented in the case studies that are outlined in the report.
The concept of nation formation is used to emphasise the fact that, unlike with the more popular notion of nation building, the emergence of nations is a process that does not lend itself to artificial homogenising impositions.
Yet the role of agency – from the state to civil society and individual citizens – is not to be underestimated.
The researchers themselves will be the first to admit that there are many gaps in the report. Mistra did not set out to pen the final word on this matter. Rather it aims to add another drop to the fountain of ideas, debate and knowledge on the national question as experienced in post-apartheid South Africa.
We hope this report has met that modest objective.
*Joel Netshitenzhe is the executive director of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (Mistra). Its research report for its project on nation formation and social cohesion has been released after ethnographic research in Gauteng, the Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Northern Cape. Its team included Andries Oliphant, Yacoob Abba Omar, Shepi Mati, Feizel Mamdoo, Robert Gallagher and Leslie Dikeni. Febe Potgieter Gqubule, adviser to AU Commission chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, was the project team leader.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Newspapers.
The Star