Race thinking and the law in post-1994 South Africa

The aim of this paper on race and the law in post-1994 South Africa is to understand the common sense nature of the continued invocation of racial classification and race thinking in South African legislation despite the country’s long history of racial segregation and discrimination both before the start of ‘official apartheid’ in 1948 and during Nationalist Party rule. It relates to several themes addressed in this volume, but in particular speaks to race classification practices today and the resilience of race in legislation, even in the post-1994 era. This paper accordingly intends to highlight the irony of the perpetual use of apartheid-era race classifications (in the absence of definitions of each race group) notwithstanding the Constitutional and legislative framework which envisages an equal and non-racial society.