Abstract
The organization of social life among race groups in southern Africa has been subjected to intensive engineering by political authorities since the advent of colonialism. Apartheid policies were the culmination of official attempts at separating groups, while democratization now represents the most comprehensive attempt thus far to reverse such separation. These two eras of state intervention embody two distinctly different ideological approaches to race relations: one that argues that good fences make good neighbors, and another that argues the very opposite. Both claim to deliver peaceful race relations and stable societies. South Africa under apartheid was a testing ground for the first proposition, and democratic South Africa has become a testing ground for the second. Both ideologies profoundly shaped and reshaped the social context within which ordinary citizens engaged with one another. In this chapter we provide a short overview of South African society under apartheid, a topic that has been dealt with in great detail in previous studies. We then describe in more depth some of the salient changes in dismantling enforced racial separation and racial inequalities after the inauguration of the democratic regime in 1994. This de-racializing of society provides the social context within which the values, attitudes, and beliefs of liberalism enter into the marketplace of ideas.
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Notes
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For Mbeki’s own vision, see Thabo Mbeki, Africa, Define Yourself (Cape Town: Tafelberg/Mafube, 2002).
For a critical view, see William Mervin Gumede, Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2005).
John Kane-Berman (ed.), South Africa Survey 2004/2005 (Johannesburg: South African Institute of Race Relations, 2006), 488. Kane-Berman (ed.), South Africa Survey 2007/08 605.
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© 2011 Pierre du Toit and Hennie Kotzé
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du Toit, P., Kotzé, H. (2011). Society in Transition: An Overview. In: Liberal Democracy and Peace in South Africa. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230116320_4
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