The quality of the South African democratic order and its potential trajectory cannot be adequately measured by abstract and supposedly universal prescriptions. It is questionable whether democratic ‘consolidation’ requires the potential replacement of a government in power in the foreseeable future, whether there is an inevitable and necessary transition of liberation movements into political parties, and whether South Africa is a ‘dominant party state’. This article problematizes ‘the national liberation model’ depicting the organization as representing the entire nation. While unifying people against colonialism and apartheid, it tends to suppress difference and is intolerant of pluralism. Social movements and opposition parties are not likely to supplant the ANC but social and political organization outside and inside the ruling organization is legitimate and essential to strengthen and deepen democracy. One should avoid fixation on a potential change of government and encourage broader factors in order to secure and extend democratic gains. In particular, wider forms of popular participation are crucial. The specific South African constitutional order and traditions of popular mass activity have the potential to sustain and expand democracy.

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This article problematises the concept of 'Africanisation' as a response to colonial conquest and apartheid rule, bearing both political and knowledge consequences. It aims to rescue 'Africanisation' from essentialist notions, but at the same time to show how paradigms cannot be simply applied where they derive from quite different experiences. The article introduces modes of differentiating concepts that are dynamic, as opposed to static, singular and unmediated meanings that bedevil any emancipatory project. The tendency to see a moment in the life of a concept as having a settled and finalised meaning renders the qualities of democracy, and other similar liberating concepts, as settled though their meaning is never finally realised. While colonialism marginalised and devalued local knowledges, the national liberation project sought unity/homogenisation, which tended to deny distinct identities, as is largely the case today. There remains hostility to pluralism at a social and political level and a failure to recognise autonomous identities unconnected to the state or the ruling organisation, the African National Congress (ANC). The tendency towards static notions of custom and paradigms that do not derive from the experiences of African women, in particular, has tended to erase the voices of women or prejudice the emancipation of women from patriarchal oppression. Africanisation, the article proposes, must be located through an ongoing dialogue between dynamic local knowledges and a range of other explanatory tools. IntroductionThe notion of Africanisation is not an abstract question and has quantitative and qualitative, substantive and concrete implications. It is controversial for many in South Africa, because it is seen, along with affirmative action and 'playing the race card', as one of the ways in which merit is devalued. It is regarded by some as undermining the allegedly 'colour blind' ethical basis that should guide a democratic order and educational system. I am dealing with a spectre that haunts many whites and attracts many acquisitive black people, who see it as a path to wealth or, from the perspective advanced here, a key route to emancipation.The question of Africanisation arises or is propelled in South Africa in the context of an assertion of values and identities that have been suppressed and which oppressors sought to impose by displacing others that preceded or arose during phases of conquest. The colonial and apartheid orders were not simply political and military

The Freedom Charter has a significant place in South African liberation history. This paper is a re-reading of the document in 21st century conditions and locates its ideas within contexts that have not previously been brought into debate. In particular, it argues that the Freedom Charter is part of national heritage, but of a special kind relating to its being part of a ‘democratic stream’. This is because of its mass democratic mode of creation and resultant product. It also interrogates the notion of ‘The People’ and what ‘The People’ think, bringing into focus unacknowledged knowledge, especially the questions of orality and communication with ancestors. The notion of ‘brotherhood’ as used in the Charter is examined as connoting more than a gender-related concept–a specific way of human beings relating to one another, akin to that of siblings, signifying cooperation rather than individual isolation or competitiveness. This and questions of gender are addressed in the context of nation-building. This paper is a slightly revised version of the Harold Wolpe Memorial Lecture delivered in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, 1, 2 and 3 November 2005.