The rarely discussed the matter about African liberation movements is the intricate nature of their nationalism post-liberation. In the case of South Africa, the struggle against apartheid was a pivotal moment in the nation’s history, and the significance of post-liberation nation-building is widely acknowledged. However, there remains a lack of consensus on the definition of this nationalism. While there is a shared understanding of what is not African nationalism during the struggle, significant challenges arise when the opportunity to shape it emerges. This is simply because it quickly becomes a bottom-of-the-tray issue as the trough rises.
It is only when the post-liberation order is put under strain that the issues of nationalism are foregrounded. These issues are often worsened by the rise of ethnic nationalist reactions, which challenge the perceived hollowness of post-liberation as a promised better life. The answer to who or what is national is yet to be given in South Africa. During those moments when the relative strength and influence of dominant ethnicities (numerically, culturally, resourcefully, hegemonic or otherwise) start crafting a narrative of national imagination, nation-states begin paying attention. This tension escalates when an ethnic-nationalist resolve finds expression as an outcome of national elections.
As an expression of power, nationalism can be a catalyst for dealing with the dynamic issues of land restitution, economic inclusion, authentic definition of national interests, and social capital management.
In the context of South Africa, nationalism in its purest form rules in the name of a nationally defined people; it assumes a context where political power is centralised and managed by a patriotic bureaucracy. The basic principle of nationalism is that those governing enter into a compact that they govern or rule in the people’s interest. In return, those ruled or governed reciprocate with loyalty to what is agreed are national interests and symbolisms associated with being part of the “nation”.
In societies “united in their diversity”, the arrangements with which society agrees to govern itself, written in the constitution, reflect and justify the compact. Depending on the context informing the finalisation of the compact, such as “shared historical origins” and “common future political destiny”, some make the constitution the supreme law and thus subject themselves to the rule of law, others make the legislators supreme and subject themselves to the rule by law. In the latter, political elites easily mutate into dynasties defined by interests as the currency of their political movement. In the former, the judiciary can easily become a cognitive legal elite, which might mutate into a dynasty held together by a jurisprudential orientation instructed by property and power relations.
Nationalism as a substrate of statehood assumed a context. Supreme in this context is nationalism’s ability to give those who volunteer membership to the “nation” a better exchange relationship with those governing or ruling. In other words, a context of the government of, by, and for the nation. By simply embracing the idea of membership to a nation, the nation is obliged to graduate rights to all individuals, and not based on social or other status. Nationalism promises equality before the law, recognition of human talent, promotion and protection of the common good, membership to the nation as a source of sovereignty, and positions “we, the people” as the centre of nationhood and, by default, statehood.
In societies marked by past conflicts, prejudice and chauvinistic tendencies emanating from the dominant body politic, the concept of being a nation to which membership could be sought or earned by domicile or otherwise is challenging. Diversities of religion, tribal affiliation, ethnicity, race, and class have always had to be superseded in a sovereign nation. Who you include or exclude in defining a nation will make nationalism and democracy work together. This is the condition on which any notion of national unity government should be based. To the extent that there are distinct areas where some are excluded in activities that define a nation, such as economic order, national unity will be compromised once the excluded find reasons to be members of something other than the “nation”.
The 2024 national and provincial elections have defined South Africa into distinct political constituencies. The country needs to pay attention to the voices that are represented
The conceptual migration or departure from African Claims of 1943, to the Freedom Charter was a seismic redefinition of the African nationalist character of the South African anti-colonial struggle’s outcome. The conception of South Africa, which belongs to all who live in it, as an ideal end state of one united, nonracial, non-sexist, and democratic country, has prevailed. The constitution drafters, instructed by the basic structure of the context in which they found themselves, created a constitutional order with which a democratic and political order could be built into the future.
The inextricable relationship these orders had with the economic order was left for the “market” to find degrees of equilibrium without upending the templates that created the inequalities in the order. The economic order relations that followed the political order relations became a recipe to institutionalise new ethnicities and thus attract membership of the economically or otherwise excluded towards new nationalisms.
The 2024 national and provincial elections have defined South Africa into distinct political constituencies. The country needs to pay attention to the voices that are represented. There are clear African nationalists, ethno-nationalists, race-defined nationalists, and religious and class-defined constituencies. Within these constituencies are a layer of people and elites that understand the significance of building one South African nationalism. Some believe it should recognise the need for exclusivity defined by diversity, including race and language exclusion. The risk of including or excluding based on diversity, especially those elements of diversity that are dominant in a society’s tormented history, is that loyalty to narrowly defined “nations” can lead to demonising others, even if they are a numerical majority.
The race to capture state power by the dominant has always been the reason for higher-order nationalism’s failure. As South Africa retreads its nationalism to justify its nation-state claim through a government of national unity, which, if carelessly handled, might be rhetoric those who command a majority can ignore when genuine conversation about the economy is not in sight, the agenda must be correct. The election outcome has fractured the “consensus”; a new one must be threaded; it can only have the economics of post-1994 as the central agenda.
• Mathebula is a public policy analyst, founder of The Thinc Foundation, and a research associate at Tshwane University of Technology.
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