Let me begin by commenting on the salience of religion, a first step in a discussion of difference and sameness, a heuristic starting point for the problematic we will pursue. It is from the study of religion, and of theology in particular, that the convictions expressed in this paper have to a large extent emerged. For that reason, I will also conclude by returning at the end to the question of religion.

Religion, identity, and culture are inextricably intertwined. Not only is religion always expressed in cultural forms, it is also a powerful cultural force in shaping individual and group identities, funding symbolic and cultural expressions, and providing both legitimation for and critical subversion of dominant and minority cultural forms. Likewise, religion in turn is shaped in multiple ways by cultural forms and practices. It is impossible to conceptualize religion as standing somehow outside of culture. Furthermore, it is in the nexus of religion and culture that crucial questions of identity arise, are sustained and contested.

The philosophical and cultural turn to the postmodern has given these questions a new urgency. For, however postmodernism might be understood, it is insistent on the critical importance of the notion of "difference" (Lyotard 1984; Giroux 1992). It also has encouraged what Foucault has called the "insurrection of subjugated knowledges."

These broader philosophical and cultural trends, while having an impetus of their own, are simply the background against which the much more urgent agenda of confronting these questions in a post-apartheid South Africa arises. During the years of struggle against apartheid, the question of culture and difference, and the relationship between culture and religion, was necessarily suppressed within the contexts of liberation discourse in general and liberation theologies in particular.

This was, quite simply, because domination and oppression under apartheid were premised on difference—on its proliferation, codification, reification and rigorous application. In such a context, the struggle for the "right to be the same," or the struggle for a "non-racial democracy," of necessity had to downplay cultural and religious differences and specificity.

Since the birth of the new nation, the question of difference and identity—cultural, ethnic, racial, gender, religious—has emerged with a critical urgency. The ability of the new nation to negotiate this question at these multiple levels is one of the most crucial challenges that confront us. It is, however, not only a challenge, but also an opportunity with rich possibilities for research, reconstruction and strategic intervention. The issues of race, identity, and multi-culturalism, and the ongoing relevance of non-racialism, are therefore among the most important political, ethical, and theological challenges facing us at present.

The specific focus of this paper is an analysis of the discourse and politics of non-racialism, identity and difference in South Africa. These issues of race, identity, multi-culturalism, non-racialism and a broadly construed "politics of difference" (Young 1990) present fundamental challenges to the construction and deepening of a democratic culture in South Africa. Carrim (1994, 1996b) has pointed out that two competing processes have emerged: The evolution of a broad, non-racial, national identity on the one hand; and the emergence of racial and ethnic identities in new forms, on the other. "Exactly how these two processes are to be reconciled is what constitutes perhaps the most important challenge for the new South Africa" (1994:1).

Democracy and fundamental human rights are now enshrined in the political fabric of the country and are protected by the Constitution and various judicial bodies created to sustain them (e.g. the Human Rights Commission and the Commission for Gender Equality). While this legal framework provides the necessary starting point for the construction of a society in which these rights will flourish, the process of deepening and securing a democratic culture will require far more than these legal and constitutional frameworks. Already debates around how "difference"—racial, ethnic, gender, language, sexual preference—is to be negotiated within this context dominate much of our political discourse.

Theology and religion have been, of course, a central component, for good and ill, in the construction of social identities in the past. Given the ongoing valence of religious belief and affiliation in this context, it was and is also deemed crucial to develop an adequate theological and ethical response to these issues. Religious communities exercise important influence on the process of moral formation and leadership, making theological reflection on these issues central for the process of ongoing education for democracy within these structures.

The goals of the argument that follows are to explore the notion of non-racialism by tracing its genealogy and its continuing valence in the contemporary situation; to analyze the local and international debates on questions of identity, difference and sameness and to assess the impact that these debates have on racial discourse and the ongoing task of constructing a contextually relevant theology in South Africa; to seek to develop some new, indigenous, means of conceptualizing "sameness" and "difference," that will help deepen and entrench a culture of democracy and tolerance; and to reflect on what contribution Christian theology might make to these ongoing debates and issues.

It is a remarkable irony that Jacques Derrida—doyen of différance and critic of the oppressive Enlightenment politics of sameness—has consistently expressed admiration for Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) in their struggle to create a non-racial South Africa (Derrida 1983, 1987). For non-racialism is fundamentally about the "right to be the same," the struggle to create a democracy in which difference is no longer the constitutional basis of the State, where, in fact, the question of difference is fundamentally subverted. This vision of non-racialism received a no less surprising affirmation when Minister Louis Farrakhan, leader of the black nationalist Nation of Islam, emerged from a meeting with then President Mandela and stated that: "President Mandela’s commitment to building a non-racial and non-sexist society, committed to reconciliation and restitution is to be applauded."

It is this struggle which provides the background to the controversial and contested notion of non-racialism. Mandela’s oft repeated words have become almost a mantra for his vision of a new society: "We are seeking to build a non-racial, non-sexist, democratic South Africa." Non-racialism is thus central to his political lexicon. Moreover, the notion itself is built into the "Founding Provisions" of the Constitution of 1996. As such, it will continue to shape the vision and the politics of the nation for generations to come.

Given this, it becomes important to explore the notion, recognizing its distinctiveness, understanding its history, and examining its ongoing importance in the contemporary struggles to build a new nation (Foster 1995). Crucially, one needs to interrogate the substance that lies behind the slogan. For the bald statement of the principle of non-racialism in the Constitution masks the fact that at every point in the evolution of the notion, including its current use, it has been the site of intense contestation. There is no consistent nor uncontroversial definition of what the term might mean, and it has come under attack from a surprising array of forces.

Non-racialism, both as a concept and as a political praxis has been the site of intense contestation in South Africa, and it has been the subject of some ironic reversals. Indeed, the history of notion can only be written under the trope of irony. For while it is a term now most closely associated with the policies of the African National Congress, it did not arise there, and its adoption by the ANC was at the same time an adaptation, both of the term itself and of the policy definition of the ANC.

The ownership and meaning of the term remain highly contested. Bennie Bunsee (1997), Senior Administrative Officer for the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), claims that the origin of the term can be traced to the founding of the PAC in 1959 when Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, in his Presidential address to the first congress of the PAC, outlined what remains for the PAC the true notion of non-racialism:

The Africanists take the view that there is only one race to which we all belong, and that is the human race. In our vocabulary, therefore, the word ‘race’ is applied to man (sic), has no plural form. . . . (in Drew 1997: 288).

 

There is a strange agreement between the Africanism of Bunsee and the liberalism of Myburgh. Both see non-racialism as a denial of race, as its complete negation. Both seek to challenge the ANC’s ownership of the notion of non-racialism, and to do so by giving it a different content. Ironically, this happens at a time when the ANC itself is questioning what the term might mean in the construction of a new nation, and in the resolution of what has historically been known as "the National Question" (van Diepen 1988; Carrim 1997).

Tracing the genealogy of the notion becomes then an important step in situating the contemporary debate within a history of use and definition. This will throw some light on these more recent struggles over ownership and meaning.

What is clear is that the notion of non-racialism remains subsumed until much later. Equally, no significant distinction between the idea of non-racialism and the idea of multi-racialism is apparent in the Communist Party, though its opponents saw a clear difference in the ideology and practical implications of the respective ideas. Perhaps we may say, at most, that the CPSA began to develop a position best described as "incipient non-racialism" (Frederikse 1990: 17).

It seems rather that the concept itself is articulated and defended in the tradition of the NEUM, which is where we find its first sustained use and genesis, particularly in the slogan "Non-racialism, not multi-racialism" which emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. Drew has outlined the difference between the NEUM, ANC and the Africanists at the time as follows:

The NEUM saw building a non-racial nation as the road to national liberation and democracy; the moderate wing of the Congress movement, along with the Communists, used a multi-racial or multi-national paradigm; Africanists saw building an African nation as a precondition for broader black unity and for the overthrow of white supremacy (1997:23,4)

 

This quotation highlights the point at which the language of non-racialism emerges as a counter to multi-racialism. How then was multi-racialism understood, and how was non-racialism distinguished from it?

Against these notions, different groups at different times deploy the notion of "non-racialism." In each instance, a different understanding of non-racialism itself emerges. This is what we will now pursue, asking who used the term against whom, and what was at stake in this debate.

(a) Non-racialism has been primarily aimed against the use of ethnic and racial difference as the ideological basis of the apartheid state, which may be described as Herrenvolkism. Strong echoes of the Nazi ideology of an era just passed, particularly in respect of the complete discrediting of their policies of racial purity, are there. Later, the non-racialism of the ANC is shaped primarily against the various forms of apartheid mobilization of difference on the basis of "race." To this we will return. At an earlier stage, however, the use of the term herrenvolkism as a description of the policy of apartheid was particularly strong within the ranks of the NEUM and its many off-shoots, the same grouping who first used the notion of non-racialism most consistently.

The NEUM’s insistence on non-racialism in their definition of struggle was driven by an argument that any concession to racial organizing, racial categorization, or even the language of difference, would play into the hands of apartheid herrenvolkism (cf. K.A Jordaan, 1954, in Drew 1997: 272). The consistent, long-standing position of the NEUM and its offshoots generated a tradition by which they consciously and vigorously distinguished themselves from other anti-apartheid groups.

(b) The picture is different when we consider Liberal multi-racialism. Liberal multi-racialism was constructed, Frederikse argues, on the premise that the fundamental problem in South Africa was one of managing "race relations." Situated within the Institute of Race Relations and later the Liberal Party, this analysis united white liberals with some of the liberal leadership of the ANC. In this early period, there was an agreement between these two forces on the need for "constructive segregation" (1990:18), best grasped ideologically as follows:

according to the ‘race relations’ concept South Africa was not a unitary society, but rather one of distinct races with inherently different interests stemming from their diverse cultures. Resolution of conflict between the races thus demanded a reconciliation of the immutable elements of this multi-racial society (1990: 20)

 

A program of action flows directly out of this analysis of the problem. Managing "race relations" is inherently linked to "multi-racialism." It was against this understanding both of the problem and the solution that the idea of non-racialism began to take shape in a new way. From this point of view, liberal diagnoses and prognoses failed adequately to grasp the nature of the "national question" and thus to provide an adequate resolution of the problem.

In fact, the liberal diagnosis was seen to be a dangerous and arrogant attempt by the privileged (white) classes to subvert the struggle for black liberation, by defining it in such a way that the end of apartheid would not necessarily mean the ending of white power. This debate would surface in a new form with the rise of Black Consciousness in the 1970s, and would continue to shape the strategy and tactics of struggle right throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.

This attack came from a number of quarters. Importantly, this included people from within the ranks of the ANC Youth League (ANCYL), where a radical Africanist position had begun to emerge in the mid to late 1940s. By the 1950s, this position had come to cause major tensions within the ANC, coming to a head in 1959 when the Africanists broke away from the ANC and formed the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) under the leadership of Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe. At the founding Congress of the PAC, Sobukwe elaborated this critique of multi-racialism:

Against multi-racialism we have this objection, that the history of South Africa has fostered group prejudices and antagonisms, and if we have to maintain the same group exclusiveness, parading under the term of multi-racialism, we shall be transporting to the new Afrika these very antagonisms and conflicts. . . . It is a method of safe-guarding white interests irrespective of population figures. In that sense it is a complete negation of democracy. [It] implies that there are such basic insuperable differences between the various national groups here that the best course is to keep them permanently distinctive in a kind of democratic apartheid. That to us is racialism multiplied, which probably is what the term truly connotes (in Drew 1997:288).

 

There are three elements to this critique of multi-racialism, all of which are important. The first is the insight that the notion of multi-racialism builds upon the assumption of racial difference. This assumption has its origins in colonial and apartheid racial politics. Accepting these categories as a starting point and then trying to oppose them is a fundamentally flawed strategy, and succeeds only in reproducing the terms of oppression in a new context.

The second insight is that the language of multi-racialism is a means of furthering white domination in a new form. If South Africa is made up of four races, each with intractable differences and interests, and the problem is managing the relations between these four races, then we end up with the scenario which became, in slightly modified form, the basis of the National Party position from the 1983 Tri-Cameral Parliament constitution, in which the structures of racial division were multiplied through multiple parliaments, all finally under white control and white veto power.

The third element to Sobukwe’s critique of multi-racialism was his attack on the Congress Alliance, including the ANC, for its continued organizing along racial lines. In order to understand this more fully, it is now necessary to look at the conflation of race and nation that dominated the SACP at this time, as well as the notion "national groups" and separate racial organizing in the Congress Alliance.

(c) Another target of the non-racial ideal was multi-nationalism. An SACP understanding of the "national question" during this early period was centrally shaped by Stalin’s definition of the "nation," as expressed by Jack Simons, who argued that a nation is "an aggregate or community of persons having a number of specific characteristics in common: language, territory, economy, traditions, and psychology" (1954, in Drew 1997: 275). The SACP’s Lionel Forman spelled out the implications: "South Africa is not a single nation but a multi-national state" (1959, in Drew 1997:280). Consequently, "the perspective is opened up of a South Africa which is an economically integrated brotherhood of equal and autonomous nations, united in a single state, in which racial discrimination will be a crime" (ibid.: 284).

This "one state, many nations" thesis was severely attacked by the NEUM and the PAC, both of whom labeled it multi-racialism, the PAC somewhat inconsistently, as it too needed to utilize a notion of "nation" in its Africanism, as we will see. The argument for multi-nationalism became in fact a key plank in later apartheid policy, to be revived more recently by Herman Giliomee, who makes the consistent argument that the present project of nation building is inherently flawed because South Africa is not one nation, but many nations within one state (Giliomee 1997).

(d) This brings us to the final approach attacked by non-racial theorists, and to the heart of the split between the ANC and the PAC, on the one hand, and the ANC and the NEUM and allies on the other: The decision to accept "national group" identities as an organizing principle. To understand the critique, we must outline the Congress position—later known as the "Charterist position."

In 1955, the ANC and its alliance partners adopted the famous "Freedom Charter," the document that was to shape its political direction until it came to power in 1994. Three clauses from that Charter framed the debate on racial politics in significant ways over the next forty years.

The first of these is the statement from the Preamble: "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white." This statement, in the developing understanding of the Congress Alliance, affirmed that nationalism could not be reduced to race. Hence African nationalism was understood in an inclusive way to incorporate "all who live in the land," thus breaking the link between nation and race (blood and descent).

From the outset, the Africanists who would go on to form the Pan-Africanist Congress vigorously contested this view, arguing that it implied equal rights to the land for both indigenous and settler populations. For the PAC, the land belonged to the Africans, and not to the white settlers. This clause signaled one of the great divides in Black politics.

The second Charter clause of significance comes likewise from the Preamble: "Only a democratic state, based on the will of the people, can secure to all their birthright without distinction of color, race, sex or belief." Non-racialism is not mentioned here, but it was implied—as a vision of a color-blind constitutional democracy of equal citizens under the law, with individual rights protected and secured within the framework of a liberal democracy. I argue that this is central to what the ANC meant by non-racialism: At the level of law and democracy, all would be treated as "the same."

The second clause of the body of the Charter was to become the most controversial of all in the decades which followed. It was headed: "All National Groups shall have Equal rights," and stated:

There shall be equal status in the bodies of state, in the courts and in the schools for all national groups and races; All national groups shall be protected by law against insults to their race and national pride; All people shall have equal rights to use their own language and to develop their own folk culture and customs; The preaching and practice of national, race or color discrimination and contempt shall be a punishable crime; All apartheid laws and practices shall be set aside.

 

It was precisely such talk of "national groups and races" that was anathema to the NEUM, the PAC, and other groups. For them it was an insufficient negation of apartheid; it operated within the terms created by apartheid itself, "national groups and races" being the language on which apartheid had been predicated. Talk of "national pride" within this context was the breeding ground of ethnic chauvinism, of potential co-option by an apartheid politics of difference. The language of "folk culture and customs" could have been taken from an apartheid textbook.

How was this position understood and defended within Congress? From my readings, primarily but not exclusively on tactical grounds, rather than out of an acceptance of the racial categories of apartheid, a temporary measure, it was hoped, that would, in time, give way to a new mode of organizing that would be truly non-racial. Thus SACP luminary Brian Bunting writes in 1957 (in Drew 1997:135):

The Congress movement is an alliance of all sections of the people in the liberatory movement. At the moment, for historical reasons, each national group is organized in its separate national organization, but there can be no doubt that with the passage of time and ever-closer co-operation in active political struggle, with the growth to political and organizational maturity of each group, the tendency will be for the barriers to break down and ultimately for full political and organizational cohesion to be brought about.

 

This prediction would prove to be accurate. But the NEUM and the PAC were united in their attack on this position, with the NEUM the most consistent, and their critique being perfectly expressed by Kenneth Hendrickse, once of the NEUM:

The Congress "alliance" is made up of various "racial" organizations in which people are divided according to the way they have been "racially" classified by the oppressive South African ruling class, that is, as so-called "Africans," "Coloreds," "Indians" and "whites." . . . It is multi-racialism—a gratuitous concession to apartheid—which is at the root of all other evils in Congress. . . . And it is precisely the multi-racialism of Congress which enables the "Whites only" Congress of Democrats to dominate the Congress "racial" alliance and to subordinate its struggle against oppression to the interests of "sympathetic," "White" patronage." (in Drew: 140)

 

In the same article, Hendrickse goes on to contrast this position with the strong view of non-racialism:

The people in South Africa will be united in non-racial, democratic, anti-apartheid political, labor, district and cultural organizations according to their level of political consciousness and understanding, not in racial organizations according to their "race" classification. Where there is any acceptance, whatsoever, of apartheid, color bar or segregation whether voluntary or enforced, there can only be division and paralyzing weakness (in Drew 1997:140-1).

 

Some went further to attack the very notion of "race" itself, none more forcefully than Neville Alexander. "Our position," he writes, "is determined by the scientific fact that `race’ is a non-entity. . . . The word `non-racial’ can be accepted by a racially oppressed people if it means that we reject the concept of `race’, that we deny the existence of `races’ and thus oppose all actions, practices, beliefs and policies based on the concept of `race’" (Alexander 1985:46).

The PAC was slightly more ambiguous because they had to reconcile two somewhat contradictory tendencies: the denial of "race" and the assertion of "Africanism," where Africanism meant both an inclusive term for anyone with an "African" commitment, and a designation of the indigenous majority from whom land had been taken.

Thus Sobukwe’s seminal speech begins with an assertion of non-racialism similar to Alexander’s: "The Africanists take the view that there is only one race to which we all belong, and that is the human race" (in Drew 1997: 287). Sobukwe goes on, however: "In South Africa we recognize the existence of national groups which are the result of geographical origin within a certain area as well as a shared historical experience of these groups." While there is only one "race," there are socially constructed, geographically determined and historically transmitted differences between national groups: "The Europeans are a foreign minority group which has exclusive control of political, economic, social and military power," the group which has "dispossessed the African people of the land"; the "Indian foreign minority group" is to be divided into an "oppressed minority," and a "merchant class" which has become "tainted with the virus of cultural supremacy and national arrogance"; and finally, there are "Africans," the "indigenous group" which "form the majority of the population" and are "the most ruthlessly exploited."

Three things are important to note: First, "coloreds" are not mentioned in the speech, and it is not clear why. Second, Sobukwe’s understanding of "national groups," while clearly a constructionist understanding, does not appear that different from the Congress position, which also saw these groups as historically constructed and open to change. Finally, the notion of African is here applied exclusively to the original indigenous inhabitants of the land. This is clearly an exclusivist understanding, in which working-class Indians, for instance, can "identify" with the "African majority," but cannot themselves be understood as African.

Sobukwe ends his speech with his now famous definition of Africanism: "We aim, politically, at a government of the Africans by the Africans for Africans, with everybody who owes his only loyalty to Africa and who is prepared to accept the democratic rule of an African majority being regarded as an African." Here, quite clearly, a new inclusive understanding of "African" emerges, one which is determined not by origin but by commitment and destiny. These exclusivist and inclusivist definitions obviously remain in tension with one another, marking PAC politics ever since.

This period is marked by the turn to armed struggle, the banning of the liberation movements, and the exigencies of exile politics. Some significant developments in racial discourse and analysis in South Africa during this period throw further light on the development of the notion of non-racialism.

Poqo, the new armed wing of the PAC, began with attacks on white farmers and civilians, a defeat for many of the more inclusivist Africanism of Sobukwe and the triumph of an exclusivist, some would say recidivist, Africanism which conflated African with black, and collapsed white into "settler" (cf. Alexander, under the pseudonum No Sizwe, 1979:116-7).

As a construct, "Black" was intended to transcend the language of tribalism, ethnicity and that of "national groups." It provided a solution to some of the ambiguities of the PAC’s Africanism, and an ideological space for the unity of the oppressed that the language of class (NEUM), of Africanism (PAC) and of national groups (ANC) had failed to accomplish. Halisi (1991: 104) writes:

[Steve] Biko upheld the principle of racial nationalism, confirming the view associated with the PAC that the land belonged to African people. However, he departed from African exclusivism by including Africans, Coloreds and Indians in the designation ‘Black’. Although the BCM objected to separate ethnic-based organizations, it was influenced by the idea of a multi-racial confederation of organizations, or Charterism, associated with the ANC. At least in theory, Biko resolved the PAC’s objection that ANC Charterism amounted to minority control of the black movement. The BCM made black nationalism superior to ethnic—African, Indian or Colored—nationalisms.

 

The BCM reformulated the basis for an alliance of the oppressed groups and excluded whites. It was this divide which was to mark resistance politics until the time of the democratic elections. What was the argument for such a position, and how did it relate to the notion of non-racialism?

The early BC was informed by the earlier critique of "multi-racialism" and "multi-nationalism," a critique intensified at the time by the notion of "non-racial sport" advocated by the South African Council On Sport (SACOS—an NUEM influenced body) in opposition to state attempts to promote "multi-national" sport. Hence in a vein similar to the PAC, Biko argued: "We needed to inculcate into the minds of our people that they are not inferior to any person, and secondly, that we all belong to one human race" (in Frederikse 1990: 108). The disavowal of alliances with white organizations was understood to be a tactical and not a principled position, as shown by the BCM-linked South African Students Organization (SASO) manifesto: "South Africa is a country in which both black and white live and shall continue to live together." The BCM’s exclusive base for organizing blacks separately is tactical, and "must not be interpreted by blacks to imply `anti-whitism.’" (in Frederikse 1990: 109).

The BCM therefore also held to a vision of a non-racial future. Like the NEUM and the PAC they shared suspicions of the notion of "national groups," and in attempting to build principled black unity they were similar to the NEUM. But against both, they asserted that this would involve a reassertion of the importance of race in political analysis and in political organizing.

In breaking down the categorical distinctions of the oppressed groups, the BCM contributed significantly to the development of non-racialism. But as it was to discover, the nuances of a positive assertion of blackness and a tactical understanding of resistance to alliances with whites would be hard to sustain in the heat of struggle. As Neville Alexander warned in his assessment of the BCM: "the war on `whitey’ . . . will reintroduce the cancer of racist thinking into the liberatory movement" (Alexander 1974, in Pityana et al 1991: 250). This warning echoes that of Steve Tshwete: "We . . . knew that BC could give problems in the long run, by reason of it being color politics . . . Color politics are dangerous. They are just as bad as tribal politics" (in Frederikse 1990: 161).

In the early 1980s some significant shifts began to take place on the terrain of internal politics in South Africa. One was heralded by the re-emergence of the notion of non-racialism, now defined as the renewed possibility of forging alliances with progressive white organizations. It signaled a resurgence of the Charterist position against the newly formed National Forum Movement spearheaded by the BCM and Unity Movement organizations. "Non-racial" organizations were now seen as those which were Charterist in orientation and which sought new alliances in a broad United Democratic Front. Ironically, therefore, organizations which had previously used the notion of non-racialism against the Congress position, now found themselves attacked by this movement on the same grounds.

But this was both an adoption and an adaptation of the language of non-racialism, through which alliances might be sought (again) with progressive white organizations. Rather than the language of principled non-racial unity as argued for by Alexander, this period saw the language of non-racialism used to describe the possibilities and praxis of cross- or multi-racial alliance. In the fluid and dispersed politics of the United Democratic Front (the legal standard bearer for the Congress movement during the 1980s) many different tendencies were permitted to flourish including, particularly in Natal, the resurrection of the Natal Indian Congress (a ‘racial’ basis for organizing).

This, of course, was anathema to both the BC adherents, struggling to sustain a "Black" identity across "racial" lines, and to the New Unity Movement. Alexander railed against this as "the thin edge of the wedge for separatist movements and civil wars," describing it as a re-emergence of "multi-racialism (Alexander 1985: 49).

By the mid-1980s, in the politics of street struggle, a new, non-racial culture had begun to emerge, where race truly did become secondary to political commitment. As some white activists began to suffer the same fate as their black comrades, including death in detention and political assassination, signs, tenuous but significant, of a common core culture, began to be forged in the struggle. I will return to this notion of "core culture" at a later point.

By now the Freedom Charter’s references to "national groups" was viewed with increasing embarrassment by many in the ANC alliance. The language of group culture and ethnicity seemed too close to the apartheid vision, too divisive and therefore dangerous. This caution notwithstanding, the broad-based movement of the United Democratic Front continued not only to tolerate but to encourage racially or ethnically based organizing as a tactical matter.

During this period, Alexander waged a lonely battle against both BCM racialism and what he saw as the co-option of the notion of non-racialism by the UDF and ANC. A quotation from his speech at the launch of the National Forum will illustrate the thrust of his critique (Alexander 1985: 45-6):

[For] most people who use this term ‘non-racial’ it means exactly the same thing as multi-racial. . . . The word ‘non-racial’ can be accepted by a racially oppressed people if it means that we reject the concept of ‘race’, that we deny the existence of ‘races’ and thus oppose all actions, practices, beliefs and policies based on the concept of ‘race’. . . . Non-racialism, meaning the denial of the existence of races, leads on to anti-racism which goes beyond it because the term not only involves the denial of ‘race’ but also opposition to the capitalist structures for the perpetuation of which the ideology and theory of ‘race’ exist.

 

In 1992, the UDF disbanded, being subsumed under a fully non-racial ANC. "Racially-"based organizing, on campuses, in schools, in local politics, and, of course, in national politics, became a thing of the past. The white activist movements, the Indian Congresses, the predominantly Colored civic and community organizations, all disbanded, being subsumed under new, "non-racial" organizations. The political and pragmatic tactical reasons for using such racially focused bodies, argued as necessary because of the physical separation of groups by apartheid, no longer existed with the demise of apartheid.

More importantly, the triumph of the notion of non-racialism required truly non-racial organizing under the banner of the ANC, where race and ethnic politics would no longer be tolerated. Non-racialism in its purest form had therefore triumphed, not only intlectually but also politically (Foster 1995). Or had it?

Discourse Of "Sameness": "African" As Anti-Ethnicity. When the African National Congress was founded as a direct response to the colonial settlement of the Union of South Africa in 1910 which consolidated power in white (settler) hands, its primary role was understood to be that of uniting the "African" people against this settlement. "African" in this instance quite clearly meant Black, indigenous African, and excluded Colored and Indian. It was a term located within the history of the discourse of racial difference, using the colonial distinctions.

But it also signaled the development of a new discourse of ‘sameness’ as, for the first time, it consciously set out to construct an anti-ethnic African nationalism. It was an assertion, therefore, that despite significant language and cultural differences—despite a history of antagonism and struggle—it was both possible and essential for "Africans" to sublimate ethnic identity to a greater common national struggle.

This view transcends what are usually held to be the primordial and intransigent bonds of ethnicity and tribe, and it gives the lie to the simplistic view that the struggle in South Africa has been primarily between Afrikaner and African nationalism, supposedly two sides of the same dangerous coin. Afrikaner nationalism, by contrast, is ethnically defined, mobilizing around "blood and origin," or around language, culture and history; a nationalism predicated on a politics and discourse of difference. As such it is a "closed" nationalism, limited to those who share that heritage. By contrast, "African" nationalism is always already a breaking open of boundaries, a conscious and intentional crossing of those boundaries and the assertion of a "sameness" that downplays and subverts "blood and descent."

However, it is still a sameness predicated on "race," indeed, on an acceptance of sorts of the racial categories and codings of colonialism. To be an "African" is to share in this racial identity, which is distinct from European, Asian or Colored.

Discourses Of "Sameness": "African" As Trans-Racial. It was the PAC who sought to reconstitute the notion of "African" as a trans-racial category, to include all those whose primary loyalty was to Africa. Thus, for Sobukwe, the only `race’ that was recognized was the `human race’, and the only distinctions that were to be made were between "African" and "settler," the latter meaning all those whose primary loyalty remained to Europe (or Asia), and not Africa.

But the subtlety of these distinctions was lost in the hurly-burly of political struggle, with some people sliding easily into a new racial coding of difference where the enemy was defined as "white" people as such. Here the tension between inclusive and exclusive definitions noted earlier reappears. However, a trans-racial inclusive understanding of "African" has emerged with renewed vigor since 1994, not only in the PAC by significant voices in the ANC. This is the basis of the argument made by the PAC’s Bunsee (1997) for an "Africanist" way to a united nation, where all are understood as African, with multiple cultural diversities and languages. It is also the basis of Mbeki’s powerful rhetorical plea for an inclusive Africanism in his parliamentary speech, "I am an African." Or as Bunsee (1997) puts it: "Our cultural diversity operates within the ambit of this Africanist unity for all our peoples. We are all Africans, but we do not lose our own cultural diversities and languages. On the contrary, we retain them as part of a complex mosaic that enriches all of us."

But it was never as simple as this. "Black consciousness" was the mobilizing image. "Blackness," it was asserted, is a state of mind, a recognition of racial oppression, an acknowledgment of the unity of the oppressed, and a commitment to struggle against that oppression. As such there are those whose pigmentation might be dark or "black" but who are not "Black" in terms of this definition, e.g. the homeland leaders and all others who had bought into ethnic and apartheid categories.

Discourses of Sameness: "Human Being". Some people insist on the primacy of their identity as "human being," and on this identity as the primary discourse of sameness, as the strongest bulwark against the exclusion and domination of the other through an assertion of the fundamental unity of the human race. There are echoes of Sobukwe here—"We recognize only one race, the human race." It is an identity which is yet overlaid by multiple other identities, however secondary.

An analogous discourse of sameness comes from religious quarters. A Christian readily states, for example, that identity is established in a faith relationship, undergirded by the claim that everyone is made in the image of God. One consequence of this assertion may be an inability to see the salience of all other identities: If the notion of the image of God in the human being is the starting point, then color will not be an issue, neither will language, or culture understood as peoples different values, norms, standards and traditions. Religion might thus provide a means whereby other identities are transcended or minimized, but it is also the vehicle whereby certain cultural and ethnic identities are solidified in discourses of difference. We will return to this ambivalence of religious discourse.

Discourses of "Sameness": Non-Racialism. Having already traced the genealogy and importance of this notion as a crucial construct in the discourse of sameness, I now turn in more detail to an analysis of its ongoing usage and importance in contemporary racial discourse.

During the period of struggle there was virtual unanimity on the use of the notion of non-racialism to express the goal of the new society, even if there was difference on whether non-racial organizing was tactically correct as a means of struggle for that society. In the post-apartheid transition, this unanimity is fracturing, even subject to questioning by many of its former proponents. Is it adequate as a definition of the goal of the new society? It is apparent, as before, that the notion is used without much clarity as to its meaning. Struggles over its meaning remain far from closed, perhaps inevitably. A definitive closure or history will escape us, but an attempt to clarify the different ways in which the notion is understood now clears the way for a more helpful debate around its continuing valence in the new society. This points to the constructive burden of my discussion: To explore ways of holding together the dialectic of identity in difference, or the politics of non-racialism and the politics of difference.

I begin by analyzing the notion of non-racialism and its interplay with a politics of difference in the Bill of Rights.

Non-racialism has been enshrined in the Constitution. But this has not shut down the space for a new politics of difference. One example is particularly instructive: The use of the idea of non-racialism by some (white) commentators to mount attacks against the policies of affirmative action and racial redress (Myburgh 1997). It is important to not that the two notions are not necessarily contradictory. But how can this claim be substantiated?

First, at the more systemic level of constitutional law, legal rights and processes, and the protection of human rights in general, the notion of non-racialism remains central. The Bill of Rights in the new South African Constitution begins with a statement on non-racial equality which echoes that of the Freedom Charter: "Everyone is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and benefit of the law." Its third clause is a sweeping statement of human rights which outstrips most constitutions in its scope:

The state may not unfairly [my emphasis] discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, color, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

 

This is a statement of non-racialism and the "right to be the same" that is understood to be the bedrock of the new society. But secreted in this non-racialism is the recognition of the ongoing valence of race and difference. The term "unfairly" signals that there are indeed grounds of discrimination which are considered "fair." Here a limited constitutional politics of difference becomes possible within the broad framework of non-racialism. It finds concrete expression in the second clause of the Bill of Rights on affirmative action:

Equality includes the full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms. To promote the achievement of equality, legislative and other measures designed to protect or advance persons, or categories of persons, disadvantaged by unfair discrimination may be used.

 

Here then, is a recognition that equality is not something which is given simply by decree. It is something to be "achieved," something which has to take account of past (or present or future) inequalities in its attainment; something, therefore, that must take cognizance of the ongoing ways in which "race" shapes the social and economic lives of people in an unjust fashion. In this sense, non-racialism in effect is not equated with a society which is color blind, that is, one in which historically derived advantages on the basis of race are covered over and thus ignored.

The italics are my own, to highlight the point I have been making: that while there is indeed space for a politics of difference within the constitution, it is only as they remain subordinated to the overall securing of the constitutional right to equality and non-discrimination, which lies at the heart of the notion of non-racialism. At the same time it is a clear example in the tradition of non-racialism that there is ample room for, in fact, the encouragement of, a politics and practice that continues to recognize both the negative and the positive legacy and possibility of difference. From this point of view, there is no contradiction between non-racialism and affirmative action as a necessary means of redress of past racial discrimination and oppression. Nor is there a contradiction between non-racialism as the assertion of legally protected equality and non-discrimination, and the positive assertion of difference in cultural, linguistic and religious forms.

The non-racialism envisioned in the new constitution runs deeper than simple legal equality. It involves the forging of what Neville Alexander calls a "core culture," that is, a minimal national identity which transcends the many differences that constitute the country. In other words, it is about the quest for sameness within difference, the quest for means to transcend the boundaries of difference in the creative, constructive search for that which makes us "the same" even in our difference.

This core culture includes the construction and acknowledgment of a common history, a common pride, common symbols and bonds of community that break down the old walls of separation. These are not things which are simply given—they require struggle, sharing, participation, openness to the other, and a willingness to learn and to teach from all. Some success has already been achieved, particularly in the symbolically charged arena of national sport, and in the manner in which the new flag has been embraced by most. Albie Sachs, now a Judge on the Constitutional Court, describes this "thicker" version of non-racialism in this fashion (in Frederikse 1990:268):

Non-racialism is not a bland thing. It is not just an absence of racism—that’s empty. In fact, the reality of developing a non-racial culture in South Africa is much richer than that. It is much more active, more dynamic. It includes language, song; it includes dance, movement; it includes laughter, a way of telling a story, a way of making a political point.

 

Some important questions remain around this notion of a core culture related to non-racialism. In respect of an effective accommodation of ethnic diversity, we may affirm the quest for a "core culture"; but we may also ask, who controls the process of defining this core culture, who is left out, who is invisible? The question of invisibility has two sides: the invisibility of exclusion and the invisibility of hegemonic domination. Both need to be contested and made visible if the process of defining the core culture is to help rather than hinder the effective accommodation of ethnic diversity.

These two struggles—the systematic restructuring of public life in terms of the equality enshrined in the new constitution and the symbolically charged attempts to create a new national identity, a "core culture," are two of the important sites where the notion of non-racialism retains an ongoing valence in the South African political lexicon and popular consciousness.

The vision of a non-racial society, imaginatively and constructively utopian, arose in the context of the struggle against systematic racism. This too gives it an ongoing power. As Albert Nolan (1988:141) expresses it:

Racism has been taken to such lengths by the system that it has produced a deep thirst for its opposite: non-racialism. . . . The non-racial ideal that has developed and spread and really taken root among the people of South Africa, in opposition to the system, is an ideal of a society in which race, color or ethnicity is totally irrelevant.

 

Perhaps Nolan’s optimism might seem hopelessly romantic, but it highlights another crucial contribution that the notion of non-racialism has made: to provide the most significant strategic paradigm for conducting the struggle against apartheid. In this perspective, it was the system of apartheid which was the enemy generally, not white people as such. Such a view, widely held, in large part helped pave the way for the kind of political settlement that was attained, for the birth of the new country without the descent into the predicted apocalypse. It also offered a framework for the work of reconciliation.

Non-racialism remains important for one final reason. It is a continuing reminder that the construct of "race" is a scientific myth, a historically contingent and fluid notion which should never be valorized or reified. The language of non-racialism is a continuing critical reminder of the need to subvert any essentializing discourse on race and difference.

Whatever the history of the concept of non-racialism, the evidence of an emerging desire for new ways of "speaking our selves" in South Africa is strong. The adequacy of the notion of non-racialism to address post-apartheid struggles about identity is being seriously questioned.

This new language of ethnicity and culture signifies an ironic return of those insights of the Freedom Charter which were repressed by the hegemony of the notion of non-racialism—the need to name the "national groups" and to protect and to develop their own folk cultures and traditions. The language of that ideal, however, was inadequate and has been too compromised by its use in the apartheid lexicon to be recovered so easily. What is needed is a new language of difference and sameness, situated within a constitutionally secured legal framework of equality, and oriented towards the elaboration of the edges of the core culture of commonness. This remains the most crucial political challenge. Here it is necessary to note other "discourses of difference" prevalent in contemporary debate.

Racism. The notion of racism poses multiple problems at a theoretical level. Foster, elsewhere (1995:16) and in this present volume, has noted the complexity of issue, and has helpfully summarized much of the contemporary debate around its definition, theoretical clarification, and the practical struggles against its effects. He also situates these debates within a reassertion of the importance of non-racialism.

If, for example, we claim that the notion of "race" is a scientific fallacy, its social effects and ongoing salience in the practices of racism nevertheless remain the central feature of our context. One helpful definition of racism distinguishes between stereotyping, common to all social formations; prejudice, carrying negative attributions towards the other and likewise common to all social formations; discrimination, meaning the power to act out our prejudices, also common to all social groups and formations; and racism. The last term includes stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination, but crucially adds the essential feature of the ideology of White superiority. Racism then becomes those attitudes, actions and cultural manifestations flowing from the ideology of White superiority.

Multi-culturalism. In the past few years the notion of multi-culturalism has again emerged as one way of expressing a new politics of difference. The term was developed initially in Canada in an attempt to address the problem of cultural difference within Canada in a positive fashion. It quickly spread to the United States where it has taken substantial root. In South Africa, the term is contested.

Those expressing a positive view of the notion often do so in terms of the language of the celebration of difference, that is, through a desire to reassert difference in a positive manner, recognizing the pluralism embodied in the Constitution. This suggests not only a tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, but a conscious and sustained attempt to cross the boundaries of one’s own culture and learn from these others. It also implied developing a positive consciousness and affirmation of one’s own culture.

Caution is equally often expressed, particularly in respect of the danger of eliding the connection between "race" and "culture" in affirming multi-culturalism, to the point where it appears that the basic problem to be dealt with is simply cultural misunderstanding, and not racism.

Others simply reject the term, for a variety of reasons. These include arguments that the idea of multi-culturalism runs the serious danger of "fixing" the notion of culture too firmly; that it is thus not fluid enough to describe adequately the boundary-crossing required in the construction of a new society; that a reification of culture might raise the prospect of continual cultural conflict; that it implicitly carries the "baggage of inequality" with it because it is always likely that a dominant culture dictates; or that it represents simply another brand of multi-racial ideology.

Despite caution and critique, it seems that this notion will continue to grow in popular and official circles as a means of affirming that we are indeed a multi-cultural nation, that there is substantial misunderstanding of the culture of others, and that the dominance of Euro- and White culture in educational resources, media representations, popular and high culture, and narratives of history and "civilization" needs to be actively contested by a multi-cultural agenda. For a significant period at least, however, the language of multi-culturalism is likely to remain supplementary to the far more difficult task of combating the ongoing power of racism, if one accepts that racism is not about misunderstanding, but about power and a hegemonic ideology of white supremacy. In short, multi-culturalism will only work within a conscious strategy to combat racism as such.

Rainbow Nation. A similar ambivalence exists with regard to the metaphor of "rainbow nation," a term popularized by Desmond Tutu and embraced by Nelson Mandela, though originally deriving from the political lexicon of Jesse Jackson in the USA. Differences in opinion are once again discernible here. Those who see it positively are usually far more ambivalent with respect to the metaphor than with the notion of multi-culturalism, perhaps because the metaphor lacks clear definition. It is interpreted in very different ways, for example: People of different identities that cannot be separated from each other; a new paradigm of humanness; and a sign of peace, of covenant, in which we are incomplete without the other.

Those who are ambivalent about the image see its emotional and constructive content as important, but feel it is ultimately an image of transition, for the short term rather than for the future. Again, this is because as a metaphor it has insufficient content; alternatively, it does not pay careful enough attention to racism; or, finally, its metaphorical content can be interpreted in ways not necessarily helpful for the construction of a new society.

The latter point is the primary theme for those who reject the metaphor. For some, it is a substitute for an analysis of the complexity of the national question; for others, rainbow colors remain too separate, running in parallel but not really mixing. Further, the metaphor also reifies and valorizes color as the basis of difference and identity in a manner which is problematic. Perhaps a far better metaphor, some feel, is that of a mosaic, where the whole cannot be understood without the complex interweaving of the parts. Neville Alexander specifically opposes the metaphor of the rainbow nation, preferring instead the idea of the "Great Garieb Nation," a river fed by many different tributaries, each contributing to the mainstream, some bringing new water, some drying up, and some being created.

The discussion so far has attended to the terms of debate within South African history and contemporary politics. Here I wish to move beyond description and analysis to make some proposals.

I propose to develop a theoretical argument, drawing on the work of Henry Giroux (1992), in order to provide a framework for some constructive proposals for new discourses of difference and sameness. Before turning to Giroux, however, it is important to situate the question properly. As I have argued repeatedly, South Africa is a society in which difference has been extended, extrapolated, invented, constructed, contested and reified. The language of difference in this context is therefore multiple. These various discourses of difference were the basis of domination and its legitimation in both colonial and apartheid rule. Likewise, resistance and liberation politics have been about contesting difference and overcoming it in political practice.

If we seek a discourse of sameness in this context, the question is, between whom? On what terms, and in whose interests? In this, the notion of non-racialism has emerged as the primary metaphor for sameness, becoming embodied in the constitution as one of the founding principles of the new society.

But, to repeat, the notion of non-racialism has not been the only term of sameness, and in the post-apartheid era it is finding itself more and more displaced, both by other notions of sameness, primarily that of an inclusive notion of "African," and by those who question the salience of a language of sameness altogether.

The question, therefore, is that of how to find new ways of "speaking" our difference in such a manner that: (1) it avoids continuing to valorize the old racial categories; (2) it finds ways to grasp difference in a positive fashion that does not involve or promote chauvinism; and (3) it situates all this within an ongoing struggle against racism. The Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa’s Diversity Monitor expresses the desire and the difficulty of this task as follows (IDASA 1996):

We have considered whether it would be possible to find new classifications with which people can identify. And how concepts such as nation-building, citizenship responsibility and non-racialism relate to the very negative practice of putting people into narrow boxes of racial classification. We have discovered how difficult it is to find new concepts and new terms and believe South Africans have no choice but to give new content to old terms.

 

Henry Giroux (1992) has best captured the tension between what he calls difference and solidarity. He begins by supporting the importance of the affirmation of difference in challenging Western ethnocentrism and liberal humanism (205):

The notion of difference has played an important role in making visible how power is inscribed differently in and between zones of culture; how cultural borderlands raise important questions regarding relations of inequality, struggle, and history; and how differences are expressed in multiple and contradictory ways within individuals and between different groups.

 

But, he continues, it is also the case that the discourse of difference has contributed to "paralyzing forms of essentialism, ahistoricism, and a politics of separatism" (205). He then helpfully defines how notions of difference are used by three political groupings, which he defines as conservative, liberal and radical. For the conservative, difference is used to justify racism, sexism, and class exploitation. Liberals have a dual approach to difference. On the one hand they embrace it through notions of cultural diversity, which often hide the power of the dominant group as the unspoken norm against which Otherness is measured (the definition of racism and the problems with multi-culturalism that I have developed above are prime examples of this problem). On the other hand they attempt to dissolve difference into the melting pot (207):

Under the rubric of equality and freedom, the liberal version of assimilation wages ‘war’ against particularity, lived differences, and imagined futures that challenge culture as unitary, sacred, and unchanging and identity, as unified, static, and natural.

 

Radicals, finally, understand difference as part of their attempt to "understand subjectivity as fractured and multiple rather than unified and static" (207).

While Giroux identifies himself with the pathos of the latter position, he raises a number of critical concerns. First, such a discourse of fractured and multiple subjectivities has the effect of erasing any viable notion of human agency. Second, it sometimes produces a "politics of assertion" that is "both essentialist and separatist." Third, it often reproduces the problem that it is attacking. And finally, it leads to forms of identity politics that "forgo the potential for creating alliances among different subordinate groups," which runs the risk of "reproducing a series of hierarchies of identities and experiences which serves to privilege their own form of oppression and struggle" (208).

These are precisely the problems we have encountered in our exploration of the notion of non-racialism. Giroux helps us to see how universal and fairly abstract terms such as non-racialism are co-opted by a conservative or liberal politics that seeks either to efface or superficially to celebrate difference in a discourse of sameness as domination. Giroux proposes a helpful way out of this impasse through which the practical problem of the discourses of sameness and difference in South Africa can be elaborated.

The elements of his proposal are as follows (Giroux 1992:209):

1. The notion of difference must be seen in relational terms that link it to a broader politics, one which deepens the possibility for reconstructing democracy;

2. Rather than merely celebrating specific forms of difference, a politics of difference must provide the basis for extending the struggle for equality and justice to broader spheres of everyday life;

3. It must be elaborated within, not against, a politics of solidarity;

4. It must be allowed to "rewrite difference" through the process of "crossing over into cultural borders" that offer narratives, languages, and experiences that "provide a resource for rethinking the relationship between the center and margins of power as well as between themselves and others;"

5. It must give voice to those excluded and silenced;

6. It must create a politics of remembrance in which different stories and narratives are heard;

7. It involves understanding how fragile identity is as it moves into "borderlands criss-crossed with a variety of languages, experiences and voices;

8. It must highlight the issue of power.

Applying these set of principles to our context, the following outlines for reconstructing the issues of sameness and difference could possibly emerge:

1. A discourse or a politics of difference must never be separated from the framework of a discourse and politics of sameness, which in our instance means from the framework secured by the notion of non-racialism and further developed and enriched by other discourses of sameness, in particular that of "African";

2. The assertion of difference must feed into the project of nation-building and the creation of a democratic human rights culture;

3. The inclusive solidarity expressed in the various discourses of sameness must be that within which affirmations of difference take place;

4. The "cultural crossing over" implied in notions such as "Rainbow Nation," "multi-culturalism," and even the creation of a "core culture" under the rubric of a rich non-racialism, must be encouraged and extended;

5. Voices historically marginalised (Black voices)and voices marginalised in the present (Colored, Indian, women, Khoisan and others) must be given priority;

6. A politics of remembrance must include recovering and reasserting the histories of peoples marginalised and excluded, symbolizing these histories and experiences in cultural, monumental and published forms. It would include too, giving special place to the history and praxis of non-racialism as the ethical and political force which shaped the struggle against the domination of difference;

7. It will recognize the fragility of identity and the way in which its threat can lead to devastating responses;

8. It must continue actively to identify, name and contest the ongoing power of racism.

Can we find new, alternative terms to name our sameness and difference, ones which have weight and credibility? In IDASA’s Diversity Monitor (1996), the Archbishop of Cape Town, Njongunkulu Ndungane, proposes the following set of identities: Black African, Colored African, Indian African and White African.

The use of racialized categories to express difference is problematic; but what is useful in this proposal is the notion of African as the primary term of sameness. It seems to unite a range of perspectives (ANC, PAC, and even Afrikaners), to offer a richness of sameness around which a core culture can indeed be elaborated, and to move away from "chromatic" or "anti-chromatic" ways of expressing our sameness. The Deputy President, Thabo Mbeki, has shown in recent speeches just how inclusive and rich this notion can be for the creation of a national identity.

But how exactly does one insert the language of difference into the notion of being African? For the PAC this is a non-issue, for it describes itself as not having white or black members—only Africans, that is, a person who may be either indigenous or not, but who pays sole allegiance to Africa. This refusal to name difference cannot work, I believe, where it remains essential to effect redress and restitution after centuries of racial oppression and discrimination. It also has the effect of disallowing the self-assertion of identity and difference, in effect suppressing both. Moreover it acts against the need to positively grasp the rich diversity of how we are "different" in our common Africanness.

The Constitution provides a way, perhaps, to take this further. It eschews the language of race or of ethnicity, to speak of cultural, religious and linguistic difference. Perhaps these differences, in unity, could be identified through hyphenation, linked to being African. Some options that have been proposed include: Black-African (or Native-African), Colored-African (or Mestizo-African, Garieb-African), Indian-African (or Asian-African), and Euro-African. While such new designations need to be owned by the groups that are thereby named, they point to a possible way for rethinking the language of difference in sameness that fundamentally breaks with the past and opens up new space for the future.

It may seem strange to introduce what at first glance seems a wholly separate set of issues by invoking religion and religious reflection. Yet in South Africa, as perhaps elsewhere, in the debates around difference and sameness, theology and religious reflection have an important role to play. For identity and difference are interwoven in significant ways with religion. What follows are initial reflections that take us in the direction of some programmatic suggestions and predictions, by which we conclude this provisional study.

Black Theology/African Theology. Black theology in South Africa, as in America, arises out of, and speaks into, situations of black oppression at the hands of white racism, both individual and structural. As long as the legacy of racism remains in South Africa, Black theology will continue to speak with a loud voice. Perhaps, however, its own elision of Colored difference in the trope of blackness will undermine its optimistic vision of black solidarity. If it continues to insist on the universal notion blackness to signify "the oppressed," it runs the danger of itself becoming hegemonically coercive. Furthermore, as black power is consolidated in the public sphere—in government in particular—and grows in the private sector, the language of "blackness" will no longer so easily be equated with oppression and domination. We may then see that black theology is gradually replaced by a new form of African theology, or perhaps by a post-colonial theology. Whichever it is, however, these theologies will need to integrate anti-racist thought into the heart of their endeavors, else they will not speak to the ongoing legacy of racism.

Religious Universalism and Particularism. Here Daniel Boyarin’s argument against Paul’s universalist claim that "there is no longer Jew or Greek" is relevant. He attacks, in the name of Jewish difference, what he describes as Paul’s Platonic universalism. A similar argument could be made against the implicit Platonism (or idealism) of the notion non-racialism. Boyarin thinks that Paul’s universalist vision "seems to conduce to coercive politico-cultural systems that engage in more or less violent projects of the absorption of cultural specificities into the dominant one" (1994: 228).

Boyarin goes on to argue that "uncritical devotion to ethnic particularity has equally negative effects" (228). He poses a question which lies at the heart of the debate on difference: "How can I ethically construct a particular identity which is extremely precious to me without falling into ethnocentrism or racism of one kind or another?" (229).

His tentative solution is in the form of a dialectic that would "utilize each of these as antithesis to the other, correcting in the "Christian" system its tendencies toward a coercive universalism and in the "Jewish" system its tendencies toward contemptuous neglect for human solidarity" (229). He also argues for a "Diaspora" identity-politics as a form of resistance, both against the domination of the universal, and against the danger of the particular having power over another. "Somewhere," he notes poignantly, "in this dialectic a synthesis must be found, one that will allow for stubborn hanging on to ethnic, cultural specificity but in a context of deeply felt and enacted human solidarity" (257).

Against this, Miroslav Volf (1995), writing out of the devastation of the former Yugoslavia, seeks to reassert the inclusive "embrace" of the Pauline vision. He holds out a different model for exploration to that of Boyarin, but it is one which is sensitive to Boyarin’s critique. Volf reminds us of how easily difference and particularity leads to exclusion and, ultimately, elimination of the other.

Inter-Religious Dialogue as a Model. Within theological and religious discourse, the debate around inter-religious dialogue shares the greatest analogy to the practical question of holding together the difference of particularities in the search for common ground with "the religious other." As such, it holds out great promise for theological reflection on this issue.

In this regard, several groups in South Africa, most notably the local chapter of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, have made major contributions to the public debate about difference and identity. Indeed, the WCRP was a key contributor to the formulation of the position of the Constitution on religion, which accepts plurality, yet acknowledges the right to differences at many levels as long as these differences do not undermine the Constitutional requirements of freedom from discrimination on the basis of race, creed, gender or sexual orientation. Simultaneously, the rigid separation between state and religion characteristic of the USA is not there, allowing for a much greater level of interaction and articulation between the goals of the (secular) state and that of religious communities and committed religious individuals. All of this suggests that there are fruitful resources within the field of religion and religious reflection for dealing with issues of identity and particularity, of difference and sameness. These include an acceptance of particular traditions which are declared and shared; recognizing difference while remaining conscious of patterns of domination and colonization; being willing to enter into the world of the other and honoring the multiplicity of truth experiences; discovering that each tradition is incomplete and thus owning the importance, for toleration, of ambiguity in each tradition; and finally, forging through common praxis a broader, more inclusive view of justice, non-racialism, and freedom.

1. My thanks to the Human Sciences Research Council, who through a generous grant have made this research possible. The opinions expressed in this report are of course mine and not those of the HSRC.

2. During a seminar given by Walt Bresette, a Native American activist, at the University of Chicago in 1991, his most troubled questioner was a visiting black South African activist who virtually accused the speaker of replicating apartheid with his talk of "self-determination" and "Native homelands." The source of his suspicion is easily understood: these terms were precisely those manufactured by the apartheid state to attempt to give legitimacy to their policies.

3. A longer version of this historical recounting may be found in my report to the Human Sciences Research Council, now incorporated (since the report was completed) in the new National Research Foundation, Pretoria.

4. Meyer, previously a cabinet minister in the apartheid government, then formed the United Democratic Movement party with an ex-ANC leader who had been suspended by the ANC. He has since left the UDM.

5. The CPSA was dissolved in 1950 in face of the threat of the Suppression of Communism Act, but was reconstituted as the SACP in the same year. Lodge (1985: 87) argues that the name change also signalled a "shift in its theoretical position with regard to African nationalism."

6. The Congress Alliance in the 1950s included the ANC, the Congress of Democrats (a white group), the Natal Indian Congress (originally founded by Mahatma Gandhi), and the SACP.

7. Frederikse (1990: 210) has argued that it was only in 1985, when all races were allowed to be elected to the National Executive Committee of the ANC that it finally became truly a non-racial party.

8. Of course, "Black" had been used in this inclusive way within the SACP and the ANC. The Freedom Charter, for instance, in its famous opening clause does so: "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white."

9. In an article on non-racialism which I published in 1991 (Petersen 1991), I predicted that the question of difference would eventually re-emerge once the question of "sameness" had been resolved constitutionally. I had no idea at the time that this would happen so rapidly!

10. The notion of "so-called Colored," or "Colored," arose in the wake of BC and the assertion of Blackness as the signifier of sameness and difference. In BC terms, "Colored" must be understood as Black, as must Indian.

11. An interesting and important side note to this was the response of NUSAS to this initiative. Under the Presidency of Fink Haysom, NUSAS embarked on a campaign on Africanization. Haysom proclaimed "I am an African" in his presidential address, and called on whites to begin to identify themselves with Africa. Part of this process would be that of a program of "White consciousness" which would parallel that of Black consciousness (NUSAS Press Digest 1977). More recently, the need for "White consciousness" has been expressed by Pityana and Ramphele, key early BC theorists.

12. See, for example, Joe Thlohloe, in Smith 1997.

13. It is for this reason that some groups have coined other names for the nation such as, in particular, Azania.

14. The clause includes the following provisions: (1) Persons belonging to a cultural, religious or linguistic community may not be denied the right, with other members of that community: (a) to enjoy their culture, practice their religion and use their language; and (b) to form, join an maintain cultural, religious and linguistic associations and other organs of civil society.

15. The origins of many people classified "Colored" under apartheid, a term rather like "mestizo," may be traced to slave ancestors (particularly from Angola, Bengal and Malaysia) who bore offspring, sometimes in marriage, in "mixed race" partnerships. Indeed, many people classified "white" under apartheid, especially if their line goes back a couple of hundred years or more, have in their lineage somewhere such mixed offspring, though this is often covered up. Others come from a mix of white settler and African indigenous partnerships, and quite often they might wish to suppress the latter origin.

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