Search

The commemorating narrative of South African nationhood tells the story of the national liberation struggle against apartheid and the transition to freedom and democracy. It places the present ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), at its heart as leader of the struggle and bringer of freedom. However, the cracks and contradictions in this national story are increasingly evident, as poverty, injustice and inequality deepen. This article draws on a case study of former anti-apartheid struggle comrades who continue to experience poverty and oppression. Their social exclusion is expressed though the contested ways in which they give meaning to past struggles in relation to the dominant national narrative. In the current context of widespread unemployment, they face a memory paradox. Conflicting desires underpin the way in which they give meaning to their experiences as they attempt to gain access to military pensions, which, however, assume a version of the past that endorses the national liberation narrative. They also contest some of the underlying assumptions of this narrative and the politics it implies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Twelve years after the transition from apartheid to democracy, South Africa remains a severely unequal society. On the one side of the divide are relatively prosperous white South Africans and an increasing black middle and upper class; and on the other side are harshly poor black South Africans. Despite decreasing interracial inequality, many white South Africans remain in a highly privileged position at the intersection of continued race and class systems of privilege. Research on whiteness in South Africa indicates that inequality is actively maintained by the discourses mobilised by white South Africans. This study was interested in furthering such research. A discourse analysis was applied to ten in-depth, semi-structured interviews with white, wealthy South Africans, to identify the ways in which meaning was being constructed around issues of poverty and development. J.B. Thompson's (1984) framework was applied to these discourses, to identify whether they were operating ideologically (to maintain unequal relations of race and class domination). Findings indicate that participants were mobilising discourses that function to maintain a system of race and class privilege. These findings have implications for the future focus of development strategy in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]