Abstract
This chapter argues that apartheid notions of ethnicity, race, and nation have endured into the postapartheid. These ideas are steeped in the country history of segregation, discrimination and subordination, from the policies of Cecil John Rhodes to their perfection by apartheid ideologues. Given that ethnicity and nationalism are usually related concepts, most nationalisms are ethnic in character, providing an opportunity to draw boundaries in relation to outsiders. In black communities, immigrants are indicted for exacerbating crime, taking jobs and women and utilising national resources meant for South Africans. This is compounded by lack of service delivery and protests around these issues, though genuine, are usually infected with anti-immigrant sentiments. Usually, there is a demarcation of “us” and “them” which verges on differences in national identity and social origin.
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Notes
- 1.
Cited in AN Pelzer (ed), “Verwoerd Speaks. Speeches 1948–1966.” Johannesburg: APB Publishers.
- 2.
JW Sauer speaking in the House of Assembly, Debates, House of Assembly 1913.
- 3.
Cited in No Sizwe (1979: 27), One Azania, One Nation. The National Question in South Africa. London: Zed Books.
- 4.
Among the legislation introduced was the Natives (Urban Areas) Consolidation Act (1945) which tightened control of Africans, regulation of contracts, regulation of influx and conditions of residence, prohibition of African acquisition of land except from other Africans; Population Registration Act (1949) to control access to and flow of labour, it also defined and classified racial categories ; the Native Abolition of Passes and Coordination Act (1949) which mandated Africans to carry a reference book, establishment of labour bureaus to direct Africans to white employment; the Group Areas Act (1950) which promulgated residential segregation and forced sale of property by one designated racial group to another on deflated or inflated rates and this created conditions of poverty and overcrowding; the Urban Areas Act (1952) which subjected urban areas to influx control.
- 5.
The Act also removed representatives of African in parliament, a provision of 1936.
- 6.
These were created by the Stallard Commission tasked in solving the urban migration of Africans.
- 7.
This was provided for by the Urban Bantu Councils Act of 1961 with the object of “integrating the urban Bantu into the systems of government of their homelands.”
- 8.
“First Urban Bantu Council for Daveyton – Advisory Board Assists at its own Funeral!” New Age, August 10 1961.
- 9.
These were based on main South African ethnic groups : Xhosa, Sotho, Pedi, Zulu, Tswana, Venda, Tsonga, Ndebele and Swati. It however didn’t include the Khoi and the San who were amalgamated into Colouredness.
- 10.
Lindela, is a deportation in Krugersdorp, west of Johannesburg and in the recent years has gained notoriety for gross human rights violations of detained immigrants awaiting deportation.
- 11.
Nowadays a “smart” ID card has been introduced to replace the Green book.
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Tafira, H.K. (2018). The Interface Between Race, Nation, Nationalism, and Ethnicism. In: Xenophobia in South Africa. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67714-9_4
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