The global political economy and contemporary manifestations of Afrikaner identity in a post-apartheid era

Rebecca J Davies

A profound dislocation is apparent in post-apartheid Afrikaner identifications. Despite the fact that Afrikaner nationalism has lost much of its centrality to South African politics, it remains an important political issue owing to the economic and cultural significance of Afrikaans speakers. Nonetheless, the measure of contemporary group cohesion and the evolution of a once coherent collective identity, bound together by the strength and versatility of the social coalitions of "Afrikanerdom", are largely overlooked in the scholarship. At the same time, it is widely acknowledged that prominent Afrikaner constituencies, most notably capital or business elites, are flourishing in the new South Africa (Financial Mail, 7 April 2000). Their success is borne out by the position of so-called Afrikaner capital, which now ranks a very healthy second only to declining English capital on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) (The Sunday Times, 30 January 2000). Since the negotiated settlement of the 1990s the ANC government has not wavered from its commitment to dialogue with particular elements of this disparate community in graphic recognition of their significance (The Sunday Independent, 20 February 2000; The Sunday Times, 30 May 2004).

With the onset of majority rule, many analyses painted a bleak future for Afrikanerdom subjugated beneath a state dominated by the ANC government and broadly aligned against Afrikaner interests; some scholars predicted the increasing tendency of important groups and sectors to simply "opt out" of the state (Giliomee and Simpkins 1999:43). It is a situation which has not yet materialised. Whilst the once sound link between an Afrikaner nationalist identity, regime and state which characterised the years of apartheid government, and which sustained a delicate balance of ethnic, racial and class forces, has been irretrievably damaged, it is evident that this newly disempowered minority still commands a vast material and cultural capital accrued under the previous dispensation (Adam, Van Zyl Slabbert and Moodley 1997:58).

Certain of these constituencies have been increasingly marginalised in the new order, whilst others have become important players in the new South Africa and upon the world stage, enthusiastically embracing elements of the wider politico-economic order. Whilst some have settled for a truce of sorts with the ANC government, it is suggested that a select number have been able actually to refigure the character of the government's hegemonic project itself, owing to their position within the leading historic bloc.

The wholesale shift in political-economic context within a post-apartheid South Africa received comparatively little attention until recently and remains the subject of considerable debate (Williams and Taylor 2000; Terreblanche 2002; Keolble 2004). Moreover, the parameters of this new hegemonic order, exhaustively detailed with regard to ANC constituencies and tripartite alliance partners (Marais 2001; Bond 2000), remain comparatively unexplored vis-ą-vis current manifestations of Afrikaner identity politics. In order to understand the simultaneous paradigm shift in the political-economic context of identifications among Afrikaans speakers in South Africa it is argued that it is necessary to understand both the subjective and the objective experiences of "the Afrikaner" against the prevailing structure of power relations. For whilst a pervasive sense of "being Afrikaner" exists, characteristically expressed in terms of cultural attributes and less frequently descent, the significance attached to this self-understanding varies considerably.

In order to provide a new basis for understanding Afrikaner identity in a post-apartheid era, it is contended that a wide array of factors inform these identifications. This means that conceptions of identity politics based on frameworks that stress a reductionism inherent in both structuralist and agency-orientated approaches do not properly capture the multilevel dynamics of identity adjustment in an era of increasing globalisation. Instead, it is suggested that the analytical tools of global political economy and a neo-Gramscian or transnational historical materialism analysis can be used as a means of breaking down the barriers between the global, national and local levels, as well as between the interconnected structural and subjective dimensions of the phenomenon. This approach forms part of a larger effort to provide a richer, more critical framework for understanding identity politics under conditions of globalisation.

The strength of the dynamic historical analytic framework that Antonio Gramsci promotes lies in its richer formulation of these phenomena and their deeper connection to particular historical junctures (Morton 2003:136). It is contended that an assessment of these structural factors and social forces is best represented within a Gramscian analysis. It operates on different (local, national, regional and global) levels of analysis simultaneously, assigning each equal analytical weight. It offers a non-reductionist and non-essentialist means of examining the negotiated and contextual properties of social identities. His reading goes far beyond a simple economism to include political, ethnic and ideological components within an autonomous political dynamic. With the introduction of the crucial concept of hegemony he in effect loosens the notion of power (of which hegemony represents one form) from a tie to historically specific social classes and, in one fell swoop, gives it a broad applicability to all relations of domination and subordination (Cox 1983:164). His dialectic comprehension of history offers simultaneous attention to both structures and agents so that identity is exposed as a structural and contested condition, punctuated by systemic transactions and moulded by agents.

Moreover, Gramsci's analysis of hegemony "necessarily draws our attention to regional, religious, ethnic and national - as well as class - lines of cleavage and connection [which] are the subject of a common analytic frame" (Wilmsen and McAllister 1996:83).

Overall, certain of these concepts and this new "sociology of power" are exceptionally relevant to an understanding of how consent - measured in all the cultural, ideological, political and economic spheres of the prevailing hegemonic project - is currently being reproduced in post-apartheid South Africa, and thus how wider structures of inequality impinge on the renovation of social and cultural communities and identifications.

By analysing responses to wider structural renovations on a national and sub-national level, this framework demonstrates that shifts within the globalised political economy have served to constrict or empower different elite and non-elite Afrikaner constituencies. It is contended that the global character of the current world order has had a major effect on the political economy of post-apartheid Afrikaner identifications as a globalised neoliberalism and liberal democratic politics have taken hold on the domestic front.

Identity is both a structural and subjective condition determined by historical forces and the prevailing structure of power relations. That is, a balance must be struck between the agency (or subjectivity) of the phenomenon and the structural backdrop against which it is realised. What this means is that only by reaching some measure of equilibrium between these interconnected structural and subjective dimensions can a proper comprehension of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity politics be sought. By so doing, it is possible to locate these identifications within a historical and global context.

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of these structural factors, there has not been any substantive attempt to address the complexities of these identifications, and the methodology and history that link identity to context, in the scholarship.

These flaws have been worsened by mainstream (territorial or state-based) accounts of identifications in a global era where diasporic pluralism, cultures of hybridity and transnational solidarities take precedence. Yet this has been largely overlooked in past analyses, which overwhelmingly privilege "the relationship of Afrikaner culture to the state and to state power" as the "pivotal issues" in Afrikaner group politics (Munro 1995:7). Even where globalisation is raised, it is viewed in the context of cultural homogenisation (Nash 2000:361), and without any thorough regard to a globalised political economy perspective that privileges a wide spectrum of local, national, regional and transnational social forces.

By developing a theoretically informed and historically specific treatment of power, this framework examines how contemporary manifestations of Afrikaner identity justify or challenge existing power relations. Although South Africa remains a society characterised to a notable degree by group politics, it is contended that whilst Afrikaans speakers exhibit a wide range of identifications not all are connected to an Afrikaans ethnic or language heritage. Determining the depth and power of these identifications is possible only by acknowledging the delicate and changeable balance between "objective commonality" (structure) and "subjective groupness" (agency). Returning to the strictures of the agent-structure debate effectively fixes the logic of power as a staple of questions of identity. The definitions of ethnicity and ethnic identity proposed here therefore build upon a broadly structuralist interpretation that is linked to an equal attention towards the role of purposeful subjects. Thus ethnicity is best viewed as a continuum, varying widely in terms of salience, intensity and meaning (Pieterse 1997:366).

In this frame, the structural continuities that are missing in many accounts of South Africa's transition can be critically addressed. Recent scholarship has confirmed that a "historical-structural" analysis of the transition (including the strength of the meta-discourse of neoliberal global capitalism) is a sine qua non of any understanding of post-apartheid South Africa (Taylor and Vale 2000:402). Although this theoretical perspective highlights only certain aspects of the transition, it is contended that, in so doing, it draws attention to a sphere that has been largely overlooked in the study of identity politics. And which is nowhere more apparent that vis-ą-vis prominent Afrikaner constituencies such as capital elites and a cultural intelligentsia who have participated to very different extents in the neoliberal revolution, and in measures to protect material position and manufacture a new cultural commentary.

At the same time the local or sub-national level of analysis must take equal precedence in representing the underlying variety in the observable behaviour of Afrikaans speakers. These non-elite actors also respond to the same global and hegemonic forces that have shaped the transition, as their identifications are in turn shaped by local circumstances.

The "local orientation" of the "new nationalist movement" has been remarked upon (Munro 1995:2), and the concerns of this politics have indeed taken a more markedly provincial turn in recent years (Business Day, 2 October 2003). That said, this slant should be reconciled with other levels of analysis to show how identification with Afrikaans is similarly affected by the global and national logics of post-Fordist capitalism and the ANC's hegemonic project respectively. The so-called local logics of geographic location, generation and provincial politics assume an explanatory weight in accounting for this variety. More specifically, this analytical frame allows a focus on the manner in which certain Afrikaans speakers have disconnected entirely from any notion of a formal grouping, but remain connected to a pervasive if subjective understanding of "Afrikanerness".

Controversy has long confounded attempts at conceptualising "the Afrikaner". With the downfall of both apartheid and Afrikaner nationalism, the issue of who or what comprises "an Afrikaner" remains as relevant as it has ever been. Assumptions regarding the homogeneity of "Afrikanerdom" endure even today, and there is still a tendency to consider the group or community as the unit of analysis, despite a considerable body of scholarship that demonstrates that the ranks of Afrikanerdom never supported any singular nationalist agenda (Giliomee 2003). This paper has contended that there are significant inconsistencies among Afrikaans speakers in South Africa today which are part of an enduring historical legacy and contemporary structural change. Despite the presence of a pervasive sense of "Afrikanerness" or "being Afrikaans", the meanings and significance attached to this subjective groupness or self-understanding are now so varied that it is moot whether an Afrikaner ethnic grouping exists in any formal sense. In short, the forces of globalisation should be considered as one of the foremost explanations for the structural realignment and possible reconfiguration of Afrikaner identifications.

• The author is attached to the Department of Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia and is a Fellow of the Centre for International and Comparative Politics, Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch, South Africa. She teaches development studies and international political economy. She is involved in research on the developmental implications of the African diaspora, and is currently developing a book proposal on the topic of this essay.

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LitNet: 09 February 2005

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