Please note there is an apology at the end of the article.
While the country remained suspended in political uncertainty — held in a collective inertia by the post-budget speech machinations of the GNU, and the direction of fiscal policy — a report of consequence slipped quietly into the public domain.
The 2024/25 State of the Nation Brand Report, released by government agency Brand South Africa, offers bold pronouncements about the state of national resilience.
The report asserts that South Africa’s social cohesion index is now at 65.7%, a metric that purportedly signals progress towards a more inclusive and unified society. It suggests citizens are beginning to exhibit a “sense of togetherness and mutual trust at the grassroots level”.
Equally striking is the report’s emphasis on national pride and shared identity. It finds that 53% of respondents identify their South African-ness as the most defining aspect of who they are — superseding subnational identities of race, ethnicity or tribe.
In a country marked by deep structural inequality and unresolved historical trauma, such claims demands serious reflection. These are not trivial — they cut to the heart of how we understand nationhood, belonging and the ongoing project of post-apartheid identity construction.
From the onset, I take no issue with the report itself, the research team behind it, or the methodology. I have not interrogated it in detail as that is not the central concern of this article. What interests me is not the empirical scaffolding but the ideological framing.
It is, of course, important to nurture a sense of pride and confidence among citizens. Brand South Africa is tasked with shaping and projecting a positive image of the nation. There is a strategic logic to this, particularly in an era where global capital is influenced by sentiment, perception and narrative. But the starting point for any serious conversation about national identity and cohesion cannot be spin. It must rather be based on authenticity.
In the lexicon of advertising, brand authenticity refers to the alignment between a brand’s values, its messaging and its actual conduct. It is sustained through transparency, consistency and a demonstrable sense of purpose. It is, in essence, about telling the truth, especially when it is inconvenient or uncomfortable. The real test of any brand — particularly one as complex as a nation-state — lies in its relationship to the lived experiences of its people.
Thus, this article poses a fundamental question: Are we narrating the country we have, or the one we wish we had? If the latter, what are the risks of conflating aspiration with reality in a moment when trust in public institutions remains fragile and inequality remains entrenched?
Apartheid did not die but it mutated
Last week, I had the honour of delivering a paper at the Dilemmas of Humanity Conference — held in São Paulo, Brazil — where I reflected on South Africa’s unresolved national question and the enduring legacy of racial capitalism. The central thesis was simple yet sobering: Apartheid did not die in 1994, it was reconfigured.
Thirty years into democracy, the architecture of apartheid still casts long shadows across South African society. The structural inequality, racialised poverty and spatial exclusion are not accidental or residual, but rather constitutive features of what the SACP long described as colonialism of a special type (CST). Essentially, the CST thesis posits a form of internal colonialism, wherein the coloniser and colonised inhabit the same geographic space yet are structurally separated by race and class.
The AfriForum-led protest on November 5 last year offers a visceral example of apartheid’s living legacy. At the Voortrekker Monument, a crowd dressed in orange, blue and white — the colours of the apartheid flag — gathered to oppose the Basic Education Law Amendment Act. They chanted slogans and displayed banners proclaiming #LosOnsKindersUit (#LeaveOurChildrenAlone) and invoked racialised fears about changes in education.
The invocation of apartheid-era symbols, narratives and fears is not a matter of nostalgia but a political mobilisation. They reflect attempts to rehabilitate a past defined by racial capitalism
This was not an isolated incident. In 2017 a similar crowd participated in the #BlackMonday protest, where the apartheid flag was displayed. AfriForum defended this, with its CEO Kallie Kriel challenging legal attempts to ban the flag as hate speech. The Equality Court, through Judge Mojapelo, rejected this defence unequivocally, affirming that the flag symbolises a deliberate rejection of democracy and a yearning for white supremacy.
The invocation of apartheid-era symbols, narratives and fears is not a matter of nostalgia but a political mobilisation. They reflect attempts to rehabilitate a past defined by racial capitalism — built on land dispossession, forced labour and state-sanctioned violence. These are yearnings to “Make South Africa Great Again” on the backs of the oppressed.
This white nationalist narrative is no longer confined within our borders. AfriForum and Solidariteit, under the guise of “cultural rights”, have undertaken a global campaign of disinformation, promoting the myth of a “white genocide” in South Africa. This narrative was amplified in 2018 by controversial British columnist Katie Hopkins, who accused black South Africans of “ethnic cleansing”, as well as by Donald Trump, who directed the then US secretary of state to investigate land expropriation and so-called “farm killings”.
Upon returning to the Oval Office in 2025, Trump swiftly escalated this trend. An executive order — “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa” — cut off funding and vilified South Africa’s land policies. More recently, a bill tabled in the US Congress (referred to as the “Afrikaner Act”) sought to prioritise refugee status for “Caucasian minorities” from South Africa.
This represents imperialist intrusion cloaked in humanitarianism. It is part of a broader strategy to isolate South Africa for its principled positions on Palestine, Brics and anti-imperial solidarity, including its ICJ case against Israel.
Ethnonationalism, neoliberalism and class fragmentation
These global developments coincide with another crucial dimension that the Brand South Africa report tells us little about — the resurgence of ethnonationalist politics within South Africa. Many political parties, including the Patriotic Alliance, built electoral platforms based on ethnic chauvinism, anti-immigrant sentiment and fear. Politicians such as Gayton McKenzie promised mass deportations — and openly declared his intent to “switch off oxygen” for undocumented migrants in public hospitals.
Vigilante groups such as Operation Dudula target foreign nationals, mobilising around the false idea that immigrants are responsible for socioeconomic collapse. In reality, these scapegoats deflect from the core issue of racial capitalism and its neoliberal offspring, which continues to marginalise the working class, especially black and migrant workers.
These movements are not aberrations but rather expressions of a deeper class crisis. Instead of dismantling apartheid capitalism, the post-apartheid project produced a black petty bourgeoisie that acts as intermediaries of capital. Many now serve counter-revolutionary agendas, defending property over people, profits over justice.
To address issues of social cohesion and national pride — shorthand for resolving the national question — we must reject cosmetic nationalism and confront the material realities that sustain inequality.
This requires decisive interventions on fundamental issues, such as redistribution of land and wealth through progressive taxation and nationalisation of strategic assets; investment in education, health and housing for the working class; organised working-class mobilisation, built on nonracial solidarity; and continued internationalist alliances with movements such as Black Lives Matter and Palestinian liberation.
As Ibram X Kendi, renowned American author, scholar and activist reminds us, racism and capitalism are “conjoined twins”. You cannot resolve one without dismantling the other. Until such time that we all embrace genuine social transformation, apartheid will continue — not in name, but in the form of informal settlements, hunger, youth unemployment and institutional neglect.
Apartheid did not die in 1994; it adapted, survived and is now reasserting itself. The question before us is not whether the nation will survive, but whose nation — and on what terms?
• Mandla J Radebe is an associate professor in the University of Johannesburg’s department of strategic communication. He is the author of the soon-to-be-published Apartheid did not die: South Africa’s unfinished revolution (Inkani Media).
For opinion and analysis consideration, e-mail Opinions@timeslive.co.za
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Apology:
In our opinion section of 20 April 2025 we published an opinion column authored by Mandla J Radebe, headlined “Apartheid didn’t die, it adapted”. The column included the following sentence, “AfriForum and Solidariteit, under the guise of ‘cultural rights’, have undertaken a global campaign of disinformation, promoting the myth of a ‘white genocide’ in South Africa.” AfriForum have complained about the statement to the Press Council, on the basis that it is factually incorrect. In line with previous Press Council rulings on the matter, we concede that the statement was in breach of section 1.1 of the Press Code. We regret and apologise for the statement.
− Editor
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