The impossible concept: Settler liberalism, Pan-Africanism, and the language of non-racialism.

This article traces the history of four words: ‘non-racial’, ‘non-racialism’, ‘multi- racial’, and ‘multi-racialism’. Its main concern is to identify when and how these terms developed a role within British colonial and South African political discourse. At the end of the 1950s, the struggles within the anti-apartheid movement became entangled with a broader discussion across southern and eastern Africa regarding democracy, nationalism, and political representation. In clarifying the significance of this moment, this article reconstructs the earlier history of ‘multi- racial democracy’ from its formulation in South African liberal circles in the 1930s to its incorporation into British colonial policy following the Second World War. It then traces the divergent conceptualisations of non-racialism and African nationalism that developed in response to multi-racial democracy. It concludes that African National Congress (ANC) leaders adopted the language of non-racial democracy in a reactive fashion after the 1958 Africanist split in order to clarify the organisation’s position on group rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]