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This paper examines contestations in the South African society-its past, present and future. It provides historical accounts of formation of ethnic and race identities; and offers some evidence that South Africans became less exclusive of people in other race groups during the early years of post-Apartheid period but have reversed this accomplishment over the last ten years. The paper then holistically examines inequality in the post-apartheid period; namely, at national level, between and within ethnic and race groups, and measured by income and by self-assessment of an individual's life satisfaction. Using the frequency of and desire for interracial social interactions as an indicator of exclusiveness or inclusiveness of racial identities in South Africa, the paper finds positive correlation between the exclusiveness of racial identify on one hand and inequalities of the level of life satisfaction within and between race groups. It identifies "inequality hot spots" on this basis, which need to be addressed if a more cohesive society is to be nurtured in the country. Finally, the paper finds tentative signs of the emergence of a common citizenry, a national identity, which would also be needed for South Africa to transition to a cohesive society.

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This article draws upon ongoing school-based work to examine the nature of the integration process in South African schools, and its significance for redrawing the lines of privilege and subordination in South Africa. Focusing on former White schools, the article argues that an asymmetry continues to exist in the contact that takes place between White and Black. The essential impetus of this asymmetry is to produce practices of cultural assimilation in which Black people are required to give up their own aesthetics and cultural practices in favor of those of the dominant middle-class and White community into which they step. However, significantly more complex identity formations are emerging out of these developments.This article argues that the arrival of democracy in South Africa in 1994 has produced new conditions for the distribution of power in the country, in particular new relations of privilege and subordination. These are manifest in a range of social sites and institutions, but take acute form in the setting of the school. The work of Durrheim and Dixon (this issue) provides an important description of this new situation. While race has remained the dominant factor in the making of social privilege in South Africa, the new conditions of democracy-what Nolutshungu (1982) would call the politics of democracy-have brought race into a much more dependent relationship with other factors, among which class is central. Black people still overwhelmingly provide the working class with its character and its numbers, but a significant proportion-two million out of 22 million adults,