Whiteness Afrikaans Afrikaners: Addressing Post-Apartheid Legacies, Privileges and Burdens

Description

�Do the erstwhile colonial settlers � who, unlike in most other parts of the postcolonial world, have decided in large numbers to make the country their permanent home � deserve equal recognition as members of the emergent nation?� South Africa has been reeling under the recent blows of an apparent resurgence of crude public manifestations of racism and a hardening of attitudes on both sides of the racial divide. To probe this topic as it relates to white South Africans, Afrikaans and Afrikaners, MISTRA, in partnership with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES) and the National Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIHSS), convened a round-table discussion. The discourse was rigorous. This volume comprises the varied and thought-provoking presentations from that event, including a keynote address by former president Kgalema Motlanthe, inputs from Melissa Steyn, Andries Nel, Mary Burton, Christi van der Westhuizen, Lynette Steenveld, Bobby Godsell, Dirk Hermann (of Solidarity), Ernst Roets (of Afriforum), Xhanti Payi, Mathatha Tsedu, Pieter Duvenage, Hein Willemse and Nico Koopman, and closing remarks by Achille Mbembe and Mathews Phosa. It deals with a range of issues around �whiteness� in general and delves into the place of Afrikaners and the Afrikaans language in democratic South Africa, demonstrating that there is no homogeneity of views on these topics among white South Africans overall and Afrikaners in particular. In fact, in these pages, one finds a multifaceted effort to scrub energetically at the boundaries that apartheid imposed on all South Africans in different ways.

Informations

• Publié par: The Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA)
• Date de parution: 29 décembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780639986647
• Langue: English

Extrait

Whiteness, Afrikaans, Afrikaners
Whiteness, Afrikaans, Afrikaners
Addressing Post-Apartheid Legacies, Privileges and Burdens
First published by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) in 2018
142 Western Service Rd
Woodmead
Johannesburg, 2191
ISBN 978-0-6399238-1-9
© MISTRA, 2018
Production and design by Jacana Media, 2018
Editor in chief: Joel Netshitenzhe
Text editor: Barry Gilder
Copy editor: Christopher Merrett
Proofreader: Isabelle Delvare
Designer: Shawn Paikin
Set in Sabon 10.5/15pt
Printed and bound by Creda Communications
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Contents
Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Keynote Address Kgalema Motlanthe
Being White Today
Melissa Steyn – Whiteness: Post-apartheid, decolonial
Andries Nel – Where are the Suzmans, Slovos, Fischers and Naudés of today?
Mary Burton – The ‘white man’s burden’: Fifteen years after the TRC
Christi van der Westhuizen – White power today
Whiteness and the South African Economy
Lynette Steenveld – Capitalism, racialism and whiteness
Bobby Godsell – The colour of capital
Dirk Hermann – Dear Mother Africa
Ernst Roets – Double standards and black privilege: The new story of South Africa
Xhanti Payi – The demands of the new world sustain the sins of the old: The parks fable on transformation
The World of Ideas: The Place of Afrikaans
Mathatha Tsedu – The world of ideas: The place of Afrikaans
Pieter Duvenage – Afrikaner intellectual history: An interpretation
Hein Willemse – The hidden histories of Afrikaans
Nico Koopman – A South African (’n Suid Afrikaner) university: Is it possible?
Closing Remarks
Achille Mbembe
Mathews Phosa
Contributors
Kgalema Motlanthe
Kgalema Petrus Motlanthe was born to a working-class family on 19 July 1949 in Alexandra Township, Johannesburg. He was elected President of the Republic of South Africa on 25 September 2008 and served until 9 May 2009.
After his retirement as President, Motlanthe was appointed by President Jacob Zuma to serve as the Deputy President and occupied that position from 11 May 2009 until 24 May 2014. As Deputy President, Motlanthe performed various functions, including the following:
• leader of government business in the National Assembly
• leader of the Anti-Poverty Programme
• chairperson of the Energy Advisory Council
• chairperson of the Human Resource Development Council
• chairperson of the South African National Aids Council
• chairperson of the Inter-Ministerial Committee for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.
In the 1970s, while working for the Johannesburg City Council, he was recruited into Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the then armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC). He was part of a unit tasked with recruiting members for military training outside the country.
On 14 April 1976 Motlanthe was arrested with others for furthering the aims of the ANC and kept in detention for eleven months at John Vorster Square in central Johannesburg. In 1977 he was found guilty on three charges under the Terrorism Act and sentenced to an effective ten years’ imprisonment on Robben Island.
After his release in 1987, Motlanthe was tasked with strengthening the trade union movement in the country. To this end, he worked for the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) as a national office bearer responsible for education. Among other things, he was involved in training workers to form shop steward committees.
In 1990, when the banning of the ANC and other political organisations was lifted, Motlanthe was tasked with re-establishing ANC structures in Gauteng Province. In 1992 he was elected General Secretary of the NUM, succeeding Cyril Ramaphosa who had been elected Secretary-General of the ANC.
Motlanthe also served two five-year terms as Secretary-General of the ANC, from December 1997 to December 2007. Motlanthe was Deputy President of the ANC from December 2007 to December 2012.
Melissa Steyn
Melissa Steyn holds the DST-NRF South African National Chair in Critical Diversity Studies and is the founding director of the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies. Her work engages with intersecting hegemonic social formations, but she is best known for her publications on whiteness and white identity in post-apartheid South Africa. Her book Whiteness Just Isn’t What It Used To Be: White Identity in a Changing South Africa (2001) won the 2002 Outstanding Scholarship Award in International and Intercultural Communication from the National Communication Association in the United States. Her co-edited books include The Prize and the Price: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa Volume 2 (2009), Performing Queer: Shaping Sexualities in South Africa Volume 1 (2005), Under Construction: Race and Identity in South Africa Today (2004) and Cultural Synergy in South Africa: Weaving Strands of Africa and Europe (1996).
Steyn was featured as one of Routledge’s Sociology Super Authors for 2013.
Andries Nel
Andries Nel is South Africa’s Deputy Minister for Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs. Elected to Parliament in 1994, he has been Deputy Minister for Justice and Constitutional Development, Deputy Chief Whip and has served on a wide range of portfolio and ad hoc committees. His constituency work has been in Pretoria Central, Centurion, Atteridgeville, Waterberg and Midvaal.
His activism began at high school in São Paulo, Brazil, where his parents were part of the diplomatic corps. As a student he participated in the National Union of South African Students and several other organisations. He co-ordinated the Lawyers for Human Rights Capital Punishment and Penal Reform Project between 1990 and 1994 and was a member of the national executive committee of the ANC Youth League from 1996 to 2001. He is currently the co-ordinator of legal monitoring on the ANC’s National Elections Team. He holds a Bachelor of Civil Law from the University of Pretoria and is married to Kim Robinson, CEO of Renaissance Strategic Solutions.
Mary Burton
Mary Burton (full name: Maria Macdiarmid Ingouville Burton) was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and attended schools there and in São Paulo, Brazil. In 1961 she married Cape Town businessman Geoff Burton, and they have lived in South Africa since then. They have four sons and ten grandchildren.
In 1965 Burton joined the Black Sash, a women’s organisation opposed to apartheid, and later various other civil and human rights organisations. She served as national president of the Black Sash from 1986 to 1990 and is currently a member of its Board of Trustees. In 1994 she served as Provincial Electoral Officer for the Western Cape in the country’s first national democratic elections. In 1995 she was appointed by President Nelson Mandela as a commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is a previous member of the Council of the University of Cape Town (UCT), and a past president of UCT’s Convocation. She has a BA degree from UCT (1982), and in 2011 the university awarded her the degree of Doctor of Social Science, honoris causa . She is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Imam Abdullah Haron Education Trust. Awards: Order of Luthuli (Silver), 2003; Member of the Order of the Disa, 2004.
Christi van der Westhuizen
Christi van der Westhuizen (PhD) is associate professor in Sociology at the University of Pretoria. She is the author of Sitting Pretty – White Afrikaans Women in Postapartheid South Africa (2017), White Power and the Rise and Fall of the National Party (2007) and Working Democracy: Perspectives on South Africa’s Parliament at 20 Years (2014). She has made contributions to books, including In the Balance: South Africans Debate Reconciliation (2010), and to various journals, including guest editorship of a special section in African Studies on Afrikaner identity (2012). Her working life started as a journalist at the independent anti-apartheid weekly Vrye Weekblad and she later worked as associate editor at the global news agency Inter Press Service. She received the Mondi Paper Newspaper Award for her political columns. She is a regular public commentator in the media and writes a monthly column for Beeld/Netwerk24 and a Thought Leader blog. Van der Westhuizen held a postdoctoral fellowship with the Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town, and a research associateship with the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice, University of the Free State. Her PhD is in Diversity Studies and her master’s in Political Economy ( cum laude ).
Lynette Steenveld
Lynette Steenveld has lectured i