To be or not to be ‘African’
Discursive race politics in a South African online forum
Since 1994, the term ‘African’ has increasingly become a contested reference label in post-apartheid South Africa, as numerous ‘white’ South Africans have appropriated it in self-reference, much to the disapproval of a significant number of ‘black’ people. In this chapter I examine what it means to individuals of different ‘racial’ backgrounds to identify as ‘African’ and how this is communicated and represented linguistically on the renowned South African online forum Thought Leader. The study illustrates not only the pervasiveness of individual ‘racial’ thinking and stereotyping in South Africa, but also demonstrates different facets of identities are negotiated and contested within the controversial discourse of ‘Africanness’.
References (44)
Anderson, Benedict
1983 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.
Ballard Richard
2004a “
Middle Class ‘Neighbourhoods’ or ‘Africans Kraals’. The Impact of Informal Settlements and Vagrants on Post-Apartheid White Identity”.
Urban Forum 15:1, 48-73.
Ballard, Richard
2004b “
Assimilation, Emigration, Semigration, and Integration: White Peoples’ Strategies for Finding a Comfort Zone”.
Under Construction: 'Race' and Identity in South Africa Today ed. by
Natascha Distiller and
Melissa Steyn, 51‐66. Johannesburg: Heinemann.
Barney, Darin
2004 The Network Society. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Bendels, Katja
2009 White Africans? Negotiating Identity in White South African Writing. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Bentley, Kristina, and Adam Habib
2008 “
Racial Redress, National Identity and Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa.” In
Racial Redress and Citizenship in South Africa, ed. by
Adam Habib and
Kristina Bentley, 3-32. Pretoria: HSRC Press.
Casale, Daniela, and Dorrit Posel
2010 “
Mind Your Language: The Benefits of English Proficiency in the Labour Market.” In
Vision or Vacuum? Governing the South African Economy, ed. by
Jan Hofmeyr, 58-66. Cape Town: Institute for Justice and Reconciliation.
Castells, Manuel
(ed) 2004 The Network Society: A Cross-cultural Perspective. Northampton, MA: Elgar.
Coetzee, John M
1988 White Writing: on the Culture of Letters in South Africa. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
De Klerk, Vivian
2000 “
Language Shift in Grahamstown: A Case Study of Selected Xhosa-speakers.”
International Journal of the Sociology of Language 146, 87-110.
Diakanyo, Sentletse
2010 “
We are not all Africans, Black People are!”
Thought Leader, Mail and Guardian online. [Accessed November, 2011].
[URL]
Distiller, Natasha, and Melissa Steyn
2004 “
Introduction”.
Under Construction: 'Race' and Identity in South Africa Today, ed. by
Natascha Distiller and
Melissa Steyn, 1-11. Johannesburg: Heinemann.
Dolby, Nadine E
2001 Constructing Race. Youth, Identity and Popular Culture in South Africa. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Durrheim, Kevin, Xoliswa Mtose, and Lisa Brown
2011 Race Trouble: Race, Identity and Inequality in Post-Apartheid South Africa. Pietermaritzburg: KwaZulu-Natal Press.
Fairclough, Norman
1989 Language and Power. London: Longman.
Fairclough, Norman
1993 “
Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: the Universities”.
Discourse and Society 4 (2): 133-159.
Fairclough, Norman
1995 Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Longman.
Fought, Carmen
2006 Language and Ethnicity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, David T
1993 Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Gqola, Pumla D
2001 “
Defining People: Analysing Power, Language and Representation in Metaphors of the new South Africa”.
Transformation 47: 94-106.
Hill, Jane H
2008 The Everyday Language of White Racism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kamwangamalu, Nkonko M
2003 “
Social Change and Language Shift: South Africa.”
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23: 225-242.
Kolko, Beth, Lisa Nakamura, and Gilbert B. Rodman
(eds) 2000 Race in Cyberspace. New York: Routledge.
Krog, Antje
2010 Begging to be Black. Cape Town/Johannesburg: Random House Struik.
Labov, William
1972 Sociolinguistic Patterns. Oxford: Blackwell.
Langa, Zakes, Pieter Conradie, and Benjamin Roberts
2006 “
Slipping through the Net: Digital and other Communication Divides in South Africa.” In
South African Social Attitudes: Changing Times, Diverse Voices, ed. by
Udesh Pillay,
Benjamin Roberts and
Stephen Rule, 131-149. Cape Town: HSRC Press.
Makgoba, Malegapuru
2005 “
Wrath of Dethrowned White Males.”
Mail and Guardian online:
[URL].
Maré, Gerhard
2011 “
‘Broken down by Race…’: Questioning Social Categories in Redress Policies”.
Transformation 77: 62-79.
Matthews, Sally
2011 “
Becoming African: Debating Post-Apartheid White South African Identity”.
African Identities 9 (1): 1-17.
McKaiser, Eusebius
2011 “
Confronting Whiteness.”
Mail and Guardian online, [accessed 30 January 2012],
[URL]
Mesthrie, Rajend
2008 “
South Africa: The Rocky Road to Nation Building.” In
Language and National Identity in Africa, ed. by
Andrew Simpson, 314 - 338. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Morris, Mike
2005 “
It’s My Country and I’ll Whinge If I Want To.”
Mail and Guardian 14 April, p. 25.
Nakamura, Lisa
2002 Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. New York: Routledge.
Ndebele, Njabulu
2000 “
Iphi’indlela? Finding Our Way into the Future.”
Social Dynamics 26 (1): 43-56.
Norris, Pippa
2002 “
The Bridging and Bonding Role of Online Communities.”
The International Journal of Press/Politics 7 (3): 2-13.
Putnam, Robert D
2000 Bowling Alone. New York: Free Press.
Ratele, Kopano
1998 “
The End of the Black Man.”
Agenda 37: 60-64.
Rodzvilla, John
(ed) 2002 We’ve Got Blog: How Weblogs Are Changing Our Culture. Cambridge, MA: Perseus.
Schmidt, Ronald
2002 “
Racialization and Language Policy: The Case of the U.S.A.”
Multilingua 21: 141-161.
South African Country Report
2011 Internet User Profile. Johannesburg: Anlytix Business Intelligence. [Accessed 18 August 2012]
[URL]
Steyn, Melissa
2001 ‘Whiteness Just isn’t What it Used to Be’: White Identity in a Changing South Africa. Albany: State University of New York.
Tucker, Andrew
2009 Queer Visibilities: Space, Identity and Interaction in Cape Town. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Vice, Samantha
2010 “
How Do I Live in the Strange Place?”
Journal of Social Philosophy 41 (3): 323-342.
Wetherell, Margaret, and Jonathan Potter
1992 Mapping the Language of Racism: Discourse and the Legitimation of Exploitation. Hertfordshore: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Cited by (1)
Cited by 1 other publications
Rudwick, Stephanie
2018.
Language, Africanisation, and Identity Politics at a South African University.
Journal of Language, Identity & Education 17:4
► pp. 255 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.