Profil du Pays: Afrique du Sud

South Africa transitioned from apartheid to democracy in 1994 and has since strived, through a new Constitution, policies, laws and institutions, to transform into an inclusive and pluralistic society. The country is home to over 60 million inhabitants. South Africa is one of the notably diverse countries on the African continent; the salient categories of social difference include race, ethnicity, indigeneity, nationality and the cross-cutting category of gender.

In terms of race designations, the breakdown in South Africa is as follows: black African 80.9 percent, coloured 8.8 percent, white 7.8 percent and Indian/Asian 2.6 percent. These four categories are a legacy of the creation of a racial hierarchy by successive colonial and apartheid regimes before 1994. After coming to power in a whites-only election in 1948, the National Party expanded on previous discriminatory colonial laws with an encompassing legislative framework to racialize South Africans. Known as apartheid, the anchor legislation of this system was the Population Registration Act of 1950, which sought to contain the population within three, later four, racial classifications.

It must be noted that the “coloured” category has a different meaning than how it is understood in the United States, Canada and elsewhere. Coloured people have a shared heritage from the indigenous Khoi, settler groups from Dutch and other European extraction and enslaved people from colonies in Africa and South and Southeast Asia. Under apartheid, “colour” consisted of many subcategories, such as Cape Coloured and Cape Malay. The “Indian” group consists of South African descendants of Indian people who arrived via the circuits of migration within the British Empire during the nineteenth century. Between the years 1860 to 1911, over 150,000 immigrants from India arrived in South Africa to work as indentured labour on sugar plantations in the British colony of Natal (now the province called KwaZulu-Natal). Unable to find employment in India, this group of indentured labourers entered into labour contracts guaranteeing them employment on Natal’s sugar plantations. A second group of Indians consisted of free Indians or ex-indentured immigrants who could return to India or were free to settle in southern Africa. Attracted by trade and business opportunities, this group made their way to Transvaal and to Johannesburg, in particular. The third group, non-indentured migrants or “passenger” Indians (mostly Muslims from Gujarat) who paid their own way, arrived from 1870s onwards. They consisted of a mixture of “teachers and interpreters,” with the majority being traders and hawkers.

Ethnicity is another marker of difference. Within the white group, the National Party used ethnicity to mobilize Afrikaners as separate from the contending British settler class. British descendants are currently known as white English-speaking South Africans. Similarly, the National Party under “Grand Apartheid” used ethnicity to create separate “homelands” or Bantustans to solidify ethnic divisions among the black African group. These ethnic groups are Ndebele, Pedi, Sotho, Swati, Tswana, Tsonga, Venda, Xhosa and Zulu.

Regarding indigeneity, what is today known as South Africa was initially inhabited by the native Khoi and San people, joined by Nguni-speaking people from 1000 CE onwards.

After the Dutch started a refreshment station at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, the encounter with European settlers decimated the San and the Khoi through colonial violence, dispossession of land and resources, and imported diseases.
The exploitation and social, political and economic exclusion of indigenous and black people intensified in the form of racial capitalism after the discovery of massive deposits of diamonds in 1867 and gold in 1886. The mineral discoveries catapulted the region into the global economy and led to the South African War (1899–1902) between the British Empire and the Boer republics (forerunners of the Afrikaners). The end of the war was followed by a British/Afrikaner white pact in the form of the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.

With regard to nationality, the racial capitalism that developed South Africa into a regional economic powerhouse depended on cheap labour, including Africans from neighbouring countries. This started with people from adjacent colonial territories being swept into the country’s burgeoning mineral-based economy, particularly men from Portuguese East Africa (today’s Mozambique) working on the mines for highly exploitative wages.

Regarding the cross-cutting category of gender, women have been subjected to patriarchal domination within the above described racial and ethnic containment of the population. The ideology of compulsory motherhood applied across racial and ethnic categories to legitimize women’s social and economic subordination. The starkest example is the Bantu Administration Act of 1927, which declared black women to be perpetual minors without any legal rights, irrespective of age or marital status.

Colonial subjugation has been resisted throughout, starting with the Khoi victory over the Portuguese viceroy Francisco de Almeida in 1510 in Table Bay. The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw nine wars of dispossession between primarily the British and the Xhosa, several battles between the British and the Zulu, and the Boers and other indigenous groups. Colonial segregation was resisted by a plethora of organizations, including the African National Congress (ANC) founded in 1912. After 1948, apartheid was confronted by a diverse anti-apartheid movement that brought people together across racial, ethnic and gender lines (e.g., the Congress of the People in 1955, the Women’s Marches of 1955 and 1956, and the United Democratic Front founded in 1983).

A confluence of international and national factors, including the end of the Cold War, brought the apartheid regime and anti-apartheid movements in 1990 to multi-party negotiations, starting with the Convention for a Democratic South Africa. Despite the most severe levels of political violence between 1990 and 1994, the talks produced a Constitution globally respected for its unique combination of political and socio–economic rights, and its emphasis on human dignity alongside the rights to freedom and equality. Apartheid laws have been replaced by a plethora of new laws advancing inclusion, redress, equality and justice. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) conducted a process from 1996 to 2003 that revealed the extent of race-based state violence during apartheid.

However, despite these values and processes, South Africa finds itself in a precarious situation regarding pluralism and diversity.

Pressing issues such as racism, gender-based violence, neglect of indigenous groups, xenophobia and a mostly untransformed economy expose deep divisions. Thus, the scores and narratives contained in this assessment reflect a society that has done well in establishing values of pluralism yet is struggling to realize these values in practice for each of the diversity types selected for the South African country case.