Shifting boundaries of racial space in post-apartheid South Africa: The case of Afrikaner youth in East London

Abstract

South African democracy has brought about changes like freedom of associations, as opposed to apartheid which emphasised separateness of races and cultures. This social change warrants new ways of living among South Africans, especially among young people. Using a qualitative approach with semi-structured interviews, this study examined how white Afrikaans-speaking university students carve out their identities, given the reality that political, social and cultural circumstances have changed in the last two decades. Participants consisted of Afrikaner university students, based in East London. This study attempts to understand difficulties and privileges associated with being a young white South African 20 years after the fall of the apartheid regime. Seeing that the participants were not born during apartheid, we wanted to understand the extent to which their parents’ perception, influence and stories affected the way participants identify themselves, their place and their roles in the democratic South Africa. The study found that Afrikaner youth are caught between two worlds: the democratic and contemporary social context, and their parents’ traditional or orthodox way of seeing things. This study also found out that, in spite of some of their parents’ influence on racism and the perception of the South African community about white people, these young people are able to carve out their own identity in which they are able to shift racial space boundaries.

Racism as a challenge for church and society in democratic South Africa: Human dignity perspective

“…https://theologiaviatorum.org Open Access Ntombana and Bubulu (2017) have confirmed that there is still a racial division amongst South Africans, and there are categories of whites, some of whom are willing to shift and others that resist change, away from racist behaviours and practices. This resistance to change is perceived as a modern form of racism (Batts 1989:18).…”

“…Between 2010 and 2020 there has been the tendency of racial conflicts and racist utterances, from social media to formal debates, in institutions of higher learning in South Africa. These utterances are heard in different provinces in South Africa and are found in institutions of higher learning such as the University of Eastern Cape and the University of Free State (Goga 2010;Ntombana & Bubulu 2017;Soudien 2010). The vandalisation of the image of God was indicated by the incident in which cleaners at the University of the Free State were forced by four white students to eat food that was believed to have been urinated on (Ntombana & Bubulu 2017).…”