Ethnicity and Group Rights: Nomos XXXIX

16. "That Time Was Apartheid, Now It's the New South Africa": Discourses of Race in Ruyterwacht, 1995

16 "THAT TIME WAS APARTHEID, NOW IT'S THE NEW SOUTH AFRICA": DISCOURSES OF RACE IN RUYfERWACHT, 1995 COURTNEYJUNG AND JEREMY SEEKINGS South Africa's apartheid system, which structured politics, economics , and society on the basis of race from 1948 to 1994, has made South Africa an important case study for racial discourse. The 1950 Population Registration Act separated South Africans into whites, Asians, coloureds, and blacks, roughly in that hierarchical order. Although separate development meant officially that each racially defined group could exercise political rights in its "own area," only whites had a political voice for most of the apartheid era. Petty apartheid-those laws, including access to movie theaters, beaches, public restrooms, hospitals, and so on, which structured contact among race groups-differentiated primarily between whites and nonwhites. In the aftermath of the count.ry's first nationwide, nonracial elections in April 1994, South African society remains deeply structured by race. The advent of a nonracial political system in a 504 "That Time Was Apartheid" 505 racially structured society draws our attention to how little social scientists have had to say about race in contemporary South Mrica . While "race relations" was a prominent research topic until the mid-1960s,1 critical research virtually disappeared thereafter as social scientists focused instead on class relations, consciousness , and conflict. Only recently have historians led a wave of renewed interest in race, racial imagery, and racial identity.2 Scholars routinely apologize for "having" to employ racial categories but avoid exploring the categories themselves. Most work on race in late-twentieth-century South Mrica falls into two broad areas. On the one hand, there are a number of studies of official discourse, focusing on broad changes in the character of official discourse and ideology on black South Mricans .3 On the other hand, psychologists-together with the occasional sociologist and political scientist-have investigated interracial attitudes through the use, particularly, of social distance scales.4 The former are crucial to understanding the state and state policy, but we should not assume that elite or official ideology matches popular sentiment. The latter highlight variation and change in attitudes to racially defined groups over time but rarely disaggregate the category of "attitudes" (according to different issues, for example), and the research is generally limited to readily accessible subjects such as university students. The practice of interracial contact, and the relationships between racial identities , sentiment, and behavior, remain almost entirely uncharted.5 The gaps in the existing literature make it impossible to either confirm or contest stereotypes about race and racism. Are black South Mricans hostile to their white compatriots, or are they committed to non-racialism (whatever that might mean)? Are white South Mricans-and especially the white working class-as racist as they are often made out to be? These are surely important questions now, in 1995, as South Mrica's political, economic, and social landscape is being transformed. Apartheid has been declared "abolished"; the two leading political parties (the Mrican National Congress, ANC, and the "new" National Party, NP) both claim nonracial credentials; the country has a democratically elected black president and a predominantly black parliament; and everyone supports the government's Reconstruction and De- 506 COURTNEY JUNG AND JEREMY SEEKINGS velopment Programme. But racial identities are still significant and play some role in shaping political, social, and economic identities. Studies of racism in other parts of the world suggest that we should beware the persistence of racism, even in changing contexts . It is precisely the fluidity and flexibility of racist discourse (and ideology) that enables it to adjust and retain broad popular appea1.6 A wealth of research exists on the "new" faces and languages of racism. In the former imperial powers of Europe and in some of their former dominions (e.g., New Zealand), racism has become wrapped up in cultural nationalism.7 In the United States, in the aftermath of the civil rights movement and the abolition of formal segregation and discrimination, very few Americans continue to believe that black people are inherently inferior or that they should not enjoy the same opportunities as white people. But many white Americans continue to hold pejorative views about their black compatriots' behavior-views which have been labeled as "modern racism" or "new racism."g What forms might racism take among white South Mricans after apartheid? This chapter examines contemporary discourses of race in a small, mostly white working-class suburb...