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This article explores the production of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity in South Africa. Centred around the private sphere of the braai, the article draws on discursive psychology to investigate the participants' dilemmas and struggles over their identity as Afrikaners, South Africans, and Africans, and the ways in which these identities are being redefined. The ‘backstage’ talk that is usually reserved for fellow whites or Afrikaners illustrates a clear difference between public and private constructions of Afrikaner identity. While the participants rejected many stereotypes of Afrikaner identity, they simultaneously recycled key discourses underlying apartheid ideology, particularly discourses of black incompetence and whites under threat. Participants generally claimed status as ‘Africans’ but strongly resisted assimilation with ‘Africa’ or a broader African identity. The article concludes that the construction of the Afrikaner community as embattled and systematically oppressed might provide powerful support for extremism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the legacy and impact of Bophuthatswana on South Africa's North-West province. Formed after the introduction of a unitary and democratic South Africa in 1994, the new province comprised most of the former ‘homeland’ and the western Transvaal, and a section of the far northern Cape. Following earlier contributions made by scholars dealing with the transition of the ‘homeland’, we pursue the views and analyses expressed there, principally by updating events since c. 1996. The paper investigates institutional and other legacies (in particular the notion of Pan-Tswanaism) that might have continued into the new dispensation, concluding that they have not impacted significantly or consistently on the province's inhabitants-save in one significant aspect. This, the kernel of our argument, is that Bophuthatswana was an artificial creation in many aspects, no more so than in its ethnic formulation as a ‘Pan-Tswana nation’. It was essentially a constellation of particularistic sub-ethnic social formations, held together by President Lucas Mangope, who exercised almost complete control over all aspects of these Tribal Authorities. Once his centralising power was removed, it opened the door for a reassertion of regionally-based ethnic affiliations. This was given impetus by the unparalleled expansion in mining in the province. Due to a number of curious historical anomalies, this mining takes place on land held by these groups with the ‘tribe’ as beneficiaries, under the overall leadership of a chief and a Traditional Council. The paper provides examples to illustrate how Mangope completely dominated the sub-ethnic groups within Bophuthatswana and conversely how their fortunes revived after his fall. There are some similarities with the Bophuthatswana regime in the systems of control exercised by these traditional authorities, but the comparison is also misleading. How the tensions created within these groups eventually play out remains to be seen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]