‘It's just taking our souls back’: discourses of apartheid and race

Abstract

Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, the issue of race as a primary identity marker has continued to permeate many aspects of private and public life in post-apartheid South Africa. This paper seeks to understand how youth at two South African tertiary institutions position themselves in relation to race and the apartheid past. Our data include four focus group interviews from two universities, one which can be described as historically 'black' and the other as histor-ically 'white'. Given the complex nature of the data, we elected to use a combination of corpus linguistics and discourse analysis as our methodological approach. We explore how words such as black, white, coloured, they, we, us and them feature in the interviews. Our analysis shows that the positioning by the interviewees reflects a complexity and ambivalence that is at times contradictory although several broader discourse patterns can be distilled. In particular, we argue, that all groups employ a range of discursive strategies so as to resist being positioned in the historical positions of 'victim' and 'perpetrator'. Our paper reflects on these findings as well as what they offer us as we attempt to chart new discourses of the future. IntroductionNearly two decades after the dawn of a democratic South Africa, questions of race are still as contested as they were twenty years ago. Although the official discourse has changed radically from one which, under apartheid , promoted and legalised a system of racial oppres-sion, to one in which the need for social, political and economic transformation is legitimated, the reality of negotiating this terrain for many young South Africans is complex. It requires that they navigate their way through the range of discourses associated with the 'old' and the 'new' in search of spaces and identities which allow them to articulate their complex subjectivities and positions.

Broaching questions of race and racism through personal journals: an analysis of the reflections of students who selfidentify as black

“…The result of this construction of racism is that transformation policies are framed as a cause of, rather than a response to, forms of racism that continue to affect universities. In South Africa, earlier research by Conradie and Brokensha (2014), Bock and Hunt (2015), Matthews (2011), Vincent (2008 and Walker (2005) reach similar conclusions. Working in previously white-only universities that were undergoing transformation, these scholars find a recurring set of discursive moves that frame racism as belonging to a history that has become irrelevant.…”

“…Much of the uncertainty reported by the participants in their research stems from the contradictions that emerge from being part of a generation who did not experience apartheid and yet continue to face its structural repercussions (in journalistic shorthand, as well as Mattes (2012), this generation is commonly referred to as the Born Frees). To illustrate, although intimate social relationships across racial boundaries have become more common (Vincent 2008), apartheid's racial classifications still play a role in shaping public policy, access to resources and voting patterns (Mattes 2012;Erwin 2012;Bock and Hunt 2015). Respondents anticipate that the politicised valence of race will exert a powerful (if somewhat unpredictable) impact on their futures.…”

The translingual subjects: Shaping identities and deconstructing rainbowism in One Foreigner’s Ordeal

“…The pathetic living conditions of the majority of black people in post-apartheid society have found attention in a number of novels such as Mhlongo's Dog Eat Dog and After Tears, Moele's Room 207 and Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow. Bock and Hunt (2015) add that although apartheid officially ended in 1994, race and ethnicity have remained primary markers of identity in South Africa. Paradoxically, discrimination, socio-economic inequalities and injustices persist, showing the stark ambivalence, and complexities of identity construction and belonging that writers grapple with in re-thinking and re-imagining the rainbow nation in a post-apartheid society awash with multiple challenges.…”

“Narratives of Social Cohesion”: Bridging the Link between School Culture, Linguistic Identity and the English Language

“…Consensus is established through the silencing or sanitising of particular issues in national discourse, including in the formal public education system (Barolsky 2013). This sentiment is echoed by Bock and Hunt (2015), who in their research on the attitudes of university students to race and identity found that a lack of social-level engagement with the tensions and awkwardness of race-thought resulted in these debates being located largely in private spaces. The outcome of this was that some of their participants were exposed to prejudiced opinions that were rarely subject to critique, and so had taken these on in their own worldviews alongside the Constitutional values they were taught in their schooling (Bock and Hunt 2015).…”

“…This sentiment is echoed by Bock and Hunt (2015), who in their research on the attitudes of university students to race and identity found that a lack of social-level engagement with the tensions and awkwardness of race-thought resulted in these debates being located largely in private spaces. The outcome of this was that some of their participants were exposed to prejudiced opinions that were rarely subject to critique, and so had taken these on in their own worldviews alongside the Constitutional values they were taught in their schooling (Bock and Hunt 2015). The tensions between these contradicting perspectives were evident in their responses, which also highlighted a form of "race fatigue": fatigue with engaging on racial terms and casting their experiences within a raced lens.…”