Most South Africans are proud to be South African, but race relations remain fraught, the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) has found.
The findings, in the council’s South African Social Attitudes Survey, raise the question of whether an overarching national identity really matters for the formation of a united, non-racist society, said the HSRC’s Marlene Roefs.
Almost 2 500 South Africans were surveyed to ascertain their relationship with the nation.
Answering the question “Would the world be a better place if countries were more like South Africa?” more than half (58%) strongly agreed. The strongest agreement was found among blacks (64%), while whites — with more than a quarter being undecided — showed weakest agreement (33%).
Two-thirds of all respondents (64%) believed “South Africa is better than most other countries”. Again, blacks showed strongest agreement (70%) and whites least (45%).
By far the majority of all respondents (83%) would “rather be a citizen of South Africa than of any other country”. More than two-thirds of whites (65%) and four-fifths of blacks (88%) agreed with this statement. Overall, Roefs said, “coloured respondents showed a similar pattern to that of whites, whereas Indians were more similar to blacks”.
Shared patriotism, however, does not appear to preclude a powerful racial identity.
“As with national identity, race identity was stronger among blacks than the other three race groups,” Roefs said. The same general trend was visible among other race groups. And race relations remain tense.
“We found that the different race groups tend to think that people from other race groups are racist. What is more worrying is that a clear majority of South Africans seem to believe that people of other race groups are racist. Especially among black and white South Africans, racism is reciprocal, with blacks thinking that whites are racist and whites thinking blacks are racist.”
The historical black-white schism appears to result in particularly strong beliefs among black and white South Africans that the other group is racist. Whites were most negatively perceived, especially among blacks.
Coloureds and Indians were generally regarded as less racist by all other groups.