The Changing Landscape of Intergroup Relations in South Africa

Abstract

Apartheid laws and policies served to create a hierarchy of four apparently distinct races in South Africa, which were systematically segregated from each other and provided with unequal access to material resources. The apartheid state was dissolved in 1994, and a new, democratic government installed, under relatively peaceful conditions. This special issue of the journal will examine the effects of this major social and political transformation on intergroup relations in South Africa. The present article outlines the history and nature of the transformation, and contextualizes aspects of race relations that will be explored in articles in this special issue.Two decades ago, South Africa was a pariah state. The policy of apartheid was vilified across the world for its entrenchment of racial inequality (in favor of the minority White population), and systematic abuses of human rights. Yet, barely 15 years ago, the pariah state gave way to democracy, resulting in a majority, predominantly Black government coming to power in what has been hailed a "bloodless revolution." The democratically elected government has faced the monumental task of transforming South African society. A start has been made in providing basic resources such as housing, running water, electricity, education, and health care to sectors of the population denied this in the past. Policies have been instituted to allow previously disadvantaged groups access to sociocultural resources and to fast-track their entry into the formal economy of the country (cf.

Vanishing Peripheries: Does Tourism Consume Places?

“…As such, the consumption provided by Sun City and through other casino experiences, potentially, are mutually emancipatory and inspirational. In the official post-Apartheid era, these locations continue to function as nodes of inter-racial mixing as informal sanctions against the same continue to hold sway within much of South Africa (Finchilescu and Tredoux 2010). The combination of this unconventional narrative 84 (pleasure core), with its emphasis on experiential consumption, and the conventional narrative (pleasure periphery), with its emphasis on economic/ environmental consumption, appears to provide a particularly powerful framework for assessing the full spectrum of core-periphery relations.…”

Preference for high status predicts implicit outgroup bias among children from low-status groups.

“…Due to the segregation enforced under Apartheid policies from 1948 to 1994, South Africa has a pronounced racial hierarchy in which Whites overwhelmingly have the highest status, followed by Coloureds, and finally Blacks (Finchilescu & Tredoux, 2010). This is the case even though Whites are a numerical minority, constituting only 9% of the population (Coloureds constitute another 9%, and Blacks 80%; Statistics South Africa, 2011).…”

Embracing Racial Reasoning: The DASO Poster Controversy and ‘Race’ Politics in Contemporary South Africa

“…As Finchilescu and Tredoux note, 'Despite their origins as a construction of the apartheid regime, these groups have a historical reality that has shaped the subjectivities and worldviews of the South African population'. 78 Any political intervention that seeks to respect the past and its implications is caught in a bind in that whiteness's privileged status remains the unquestioned, unseen norm. 79 Black South Africans reacted negatively to the poster partly because of its apparent denial of this fact.…”