Is South Africa a nation?

Can South Africa truly be regarded as a nation or does it remain fragmented by historical and socio-political divides? Do the legacies of inequality, racism and ethnic tensions in the country hinder its progress toward unity and cohesive nationhood? And what has been the effect of nation-building efforts aimed at fostering a unified South African identity since 1994? 

Academic Stephen Gordon argues that, “South African society is widely regarded as deeply segmented and complexly plural.” The social barriers of the past no longer exist as neatly delineated categories; instead, they converge and overlap, becoming interconnected and intricately linked. The nature of the South African nation has been the subject of debate, and much of that debate can be traced back to the country’s rich cultural diversity. 

Does South Africa refer to a real place with real people living there? There are a number of follow-up questions that arise from this one. To what extent do South Africans take pride in their nationality? Is there (still) a significant role for ethnic, racial and other subgroup identities in South African politics and society? How can we promote social cohesion and harmony in the midst of our many cultural backgrounds? 

Under apartheid, societal divisions were reinforced by the government’s repeated emphasis on and reification of racial and ethnic disparities. 

South Africa is not alone in trying to find common ground amid cultural differences. As political philosopher William Kymlicka points out, most modern countries are multiethnic and multicultural, with a variety of peoples coexisting inside a single government. 

What is a nation?

The academic discussion on nations and nationalism began with French Orientalist and Semitic scholar Ernest Renan’s question: “What is a nation?” in his presentation at the Sorbonne in 1887 and has not ended to this day. Renan and other 19th-century intellectuals adopted a nationalist philosophy, believing in the primacy of the country and saw its development as nothing more than a gradual realisation of shared identity. 

Benedict Anderson, the author of Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, argued that nations “are imagined as sovereign, limited and as a community. They are sovereign, because the concept was born in an age in which 

Enlightenment and Revolution were destroying the legitimacy of the divinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm, they are limited because, even the largest of them has finite, if elastic, boundaries, beyond which lie other nations, and it is imagined as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.” 

The concept nation comes from the Greek word “nation”, which meant a family or clan. In this context, nation refers to a group of people who share a common ancestor and hence a similar history, language, cultural beliefs such as a shared notion of ancestry. 

Political philosophy emeritus professor Johan Degenaar noted that nationhood includes cultural symbols such as a flag, monuments, poetry and architecture. 

The concept of “nation” is used nowadays to refer to all the people who reside in a certain region and are governed by a unified government. But this does not imply a lack of cultural diversity. Degenaar argues that the word “state” or “state nation” is preferable to the phrase “civic nation”, which refers to a group of people who live in a specific region but are governed by a centralised authority. 

The concept of nation-building originates in discussions about the growth of civil societies, argue Karl Deutsch and William Folz, the editors of the book of the same name, Nation-building. They highlight the effect that modernisation had in bringing people from rural areas and small communities into the national mainstream. Increased urbanisation, industrialisation and access to higher education are all characteristics of modernisation, as is the spread of new forms of communication and transportation. Deutsch and Folz argue that these developments will ultimately lead to a weakening of ethnic identity and a realignment of allegiances away from particular communities and toward the nation. 

In their paper, Politics of Identity and Crisis of Nation Building in Africa: The Nigerian Experience, OR Oloapa and O Omodunbi write that it is widely agreed that one of the most important aspects of forming a nation is the process of fostering a cohesive national identity that transcends more specific ethnic, cultural and racial identities. 

Therefore, a national identity is seen as a contemporary collective identity founded on innovative models of social organisation, much like the concept of the civic nation, according to Professor Maano Ramutsindela, the author of National identity in South Africa: The search for harmony. 

There are far-reaching implications of divergent understanding and use of the term nation, which involve not just the political elite and academics but also the citizens of a state’s use of concepts like a national identity and national unity. 

Nation-building in South Africa

Most states in the world strive to become what we can call “true nation states,” in which the interests of the state and the interests of the nation are in harmony. This is the case even if the majority of states in the world are not mono-national. Identities, languages, cultures, myths and symbols of such nations are characterised as if they were composed of a single, homogeneous population. To achieve this goal, several different nation-building tactics have been employed. 

An essential goal of nation-building efforts is the promotion of a shared national identity that can eventually substitute for allegiance to distinct ethnic or cultural communities. Among the many ways this is accomplished is through the establishment of national institutions such as a national broadcaster and army, the replacement of cultural symbols with a single set of national symbols, and the acknowledgement of only one dominant perspective to the history and myths of a country. As a means to an end, nation-building makes use of educational, social, welfare, economic and development institutions. 

“It is common for the dominant group’s language and culture to become the de facto standard at the national level. Assimilation procedures are commonly used to force those who are not part of the majority group to adopt the ‘national’ language and culture,” according to Kymlicka. 

Africans have not been able to create their own states in accordance with their own beliefs, heritage and institutions because of historical factors. As a result, the modern African state is still a legacy of colonialism. South Sudanese politician and diplomat Francis Deng argues that for African leaders, nation-building has become a near-obvious method for addressing the deep societal fissures within their borders in the wake of Western state-building. 

The ANC government’s decision to focus on nation-building despite its contentious history was made in 1994 to heal the country’s wounds from apartheid. In this way, South Africa has followed the lead of the rest of Africa in suppressing and restraining sub-national 

forms of social identification in favor of promoting a single national identity, argues Elirea Bornman, professor emeritus in the department of communication science at Unisa. 

There has been more controversy and confusion surrounding nation-building in South Africa than anywhere else in Africa. Edward Ramsamy, associate professor of Africana Studies at the Bloustein School, explains this disarray by noting the varying perspectives on nation-building presented by the ANC government at various times. 

The Nobel Peace Prize winner and activist Desmond Tutu made popular the lyrical metaphor of a Rainbow Nation to describe South Africa. The rainbow’s many colours are understood to represent the country’s many different races and cultures. It suggests that South Africa’s rich cultural diversity is not just recognised, but celebrated. ??First name Adam and Ramsamy state that “the doctrine of non-racialism has had a far greater and consistent influence on government policy than rainbowism. Non-racialism does not deny the existence of ethnic, racial and other forms of subnational identification Nevertheless, such identities are believed to be vestiges of apartheid which should be restricted to the private domain and are not allowed to influence the public, social and political realms.” 

There is an underlying presumption in non-racialism that all South Africans share a common history, culture and fate. It stresses the importance of establishing a civic nation where all citizens, regardless of race, religion or ethnicity, have equal rights. There is only one accepted interpretation of South African history and only one group of people generally recognised as national heroes, both of which have been used to define the country’s culture. While earlier attempts to showcase national culture sought to look culturally neutral, an African shift in nation-building discourse was marked by the Mbeki administration, argues academic Thomas Blaser. Despite the fact that the Mbeki presidency is often linked to the re-racialisation of South African society, experts see this change not as a new turn in the nation-building discourse but rather as nearly self-evident because of the ANC government’s dedication to pan-Africanism. 

As a result, the move from a rainbow-inspired image to one that emphasises African dominance is merely a matter of emphasis. The national anthem, Nkosi sikilel’ iAfrika (God Bless Africa), already included its essence. According to Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni, professor and chair of Epistemologies of the Global South at University of Bayreuth, “The resurgence of discourses on whiteness and Africanness is nothing more than a continuation of divides originating in the intractable settler-native problem that plagues the vast majority of multiracial societies that emerged as a result of imperialism and colonialism.” 

Organisations such as Black First Land First (BLF) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, who view South Africa through the lens of exclusive racial identities, have actively pursued racist conceptions of the nation. Discourses on national identity nonetheless regularly incorporate different visions. Afrikaner nationalism is one of the most well-known examples, and it is one that many people mistakenly assumed to have died out with the arrival of a new political system. Despite the fact that the new administration has mostly relegated the Afrikaner nationalist rhetoric to far-right activities, it erupted in linguistic battles over the increasing standardisation of English and the removal of Afrikaans as a language of instruction at many universities in South Africa. 

Another example could be the role ethnicity plays in politics, as illustrated by the May 2024 elections, in which the Zulu-dominated KwaZulu-Natal supported the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party led by Jacob Zuma, highlighting ethnic identity’s influence on political behaviour.

Towards non-racialism and the rainbow nation ideology is simply one facet of the ANC government’s nation-building policies. The Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) sought to address economic and social disparities. The non-racist ANC and the RDP are diametrically opposed. According to Bornman, the ANC promoted the idea that it prefers a black nation over the rainbow nation by directing the majority of state resources to black communities. The RDP’s affirmative action and black economic empowerment policies also contribute to South Africa’s re-racialisation. 

Even though nation-building in South Africa has a difficult history and is widely criticised, it still retains a moral high ground. When advocating for nation-building, it is common to draw parallels between the process and the horrors of apartheid, which are then presented as the only possible option if nation-building fails or is not supported by the populace. But colonialism and apartheid are commonly cited as the reasons South Africa’s national unity has yet to be resolved, Brendan Boyze argues in Nation-building: Discourse in a Democracy. 

Is South Africa a nation?

As a result of the many different perspectives on what it means to be a nation and who belongs to it, social identities of citizens are now seen as critical information for assessing the health of the nation. The results of study not only provide insights into many dimensions of patterns of social identification, but are also interpreted differently by diverse analysts, much like the varying perspectives on the various notions associated with the nation. 

South Africans have formed a common state nationalism quite fast despite socio-economic differences and cleavages. 

After the political shift in 1994, academic Robert Mattes cites examples that, in his opinion, support the idea that a new kind of political community has emerged in South Africa. In particular, he cites data from the 1995 Idasa and World Value Surveys. These two polls show that more than 90% of South Africans agree that the country should exist as a delimited area, and that they are pleased to call themselves citizens of South Africa and participants in the country’s political community. Mattes suggests that members of various communities (ethnic, cultural or racial) have shifted their allegiance to the South African nation. He also maintains that there is scant proof of “ethnic nationalism” and that “most sub-national groupings are territorially dispersed and not bound to a particular location”, which may help explain why South Africa appears to differ in this regard so radically from other divided societies. 

Mattes adds that the apartheid state was undemocratic because it created racial and ethnic divisions in South African society, in contrast to post-communist countries where such divisions were mostly avoided. As a result, he argues, the imagination of a multiracial South African nation, a freshly defined terminal political community comprising people of many colours and creeds, was helped forward by the resistance against apartheid’s reification of ethnic and racial identities. 

If citizens aren’t interested in a volkstaat or Zulu nation, it’s probably because ethnic groups such as Afrikaners and Zulus no longer have hopes of achieving independence on their own. But it is important to remember that some communities are geographically dispersed and, as Mattes points out, have come to strongly identify with South Africa as a whole rather than any one location over the course of the past century. Therefore, they may find it difficult to identify with a territorially delineated kind of self-determination. But, says Kymlicka, that doesn’t mean they’re content with the way things are with the state or opposed to non-territorial forms of autonomy. 

For instance, the Federasie vir Afrikaanse Kultuurvereniginge, an Afrikaner cultural organisation, has drafted documents outlining cultural self-determination as a viable future path for Afrikaner nationalism. And recent history suggests that under the appropriate conditions, black ethnic nationalism can re-emerge and lead to calls for self-determination and independence. For instance, studies by Mary de Haas and Paulus Zulu show that Zulus in rural Kwazulu-Natal continue to place a high value on ethnic affiliation. 

South Africa is often celebrated as a “rainbow nation” for its diverse cultural and ethnic makeup, but this title remains more aspirational than reflective of reality. The country continues to grapple with deep-seated divisions rooted in inequality, racism, and ethnic tensions, which hinder national unity. For instance, the 2024 national elections highlighted the significant role of ethnicity in South African politics. The ANC experienced a considerable loss of votes in KwaZulu-Natal, where many voters shifted their support to the newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe party. This party, led by former President Jacob Zuma, garnered strong backing from the Zulu community, who identified with Zuma’s ethnic heritage and his roots in KwaZulu-Natal. This voting trend underscored the enduring influence of ethnic identity in political choices, further fracturing the country’s political landscape along tribal lines.

While progress has been made since democracy in 1994, these divisions highlight the challenges of fostering unity in a society still deeply influenced by historical and cultural divisions. Addressing these issues requires deliberate and inclusive efforts to bridge ethnic and racial divides. South Africa’s journey toward becoming a truly united and equitable nation is far from complete, but with sustained commitment and transformative policies, there remains hope for meaningful progress. 

Meketsi Tsotetsi is a PhD candidate in political studies, focusing on understanding complex socio-political issues.