Traditionality

Abstract

The spread of modernity around the world and the intellectual construction of a traditional-modern continuum has, sometimes, erroneously been interpreted as though traditionality and modernity are mutually exclusive and that modern societies are traditionless. The experience of other societies has demonstrated that modernization does not mean that societies undergoing change relinquish their traditions, or that there is no attachment to customs and ways of the past or to symbols of collective identity. On the contrary, modernity has been shown to affect only one specific aspect of traditionality, namely the legitimation of the social, political and cultural orders in terms of traditional symbols, while it has given rise to a continuous process of reconstitution of the other aspects of tradition.¹ This process is relevant to the African elite of South Africa as they are a fully Westernized category of people, while as part of the general African population which is known for its traditional heritage, they have been excluded from the societal community. The traditionality and particularly the ethnic extraction of the African population of South Africa has been interpreted in various ways, among others as a basis for the political ordering of South African society. As was pointed out in Chapter 1, it became official policy after 1948 that the Africans should exercise their civil rights in homelands where a traditional lifestyle predominates, while measures were taken to discourage their upward mobility in the modern sector of society.