Rebuilding the Future or Revisiting the Past? Post-apartheid Afrikaner Politics

Orthodox analyses have presented a bleak future for the Afrikaner community in contemporary South Africa, subjugated under the stewardship of a state entirely dominated by an African National Congress (ANC) government that is broadly aligned against Afrikaner interests. This paper seeks to clarify the changes and tensions apparent within a very heterodox Afrikaner community, as well as the mutually empowering linkages between the globalised political economy and various domestic social forces, by presenting a political economy of post-apartheid Afrikaner identifications and diversity. What this focus does is to emphasise the global political economy and closely associated ideology of globalisation as a major catalyst for change in these identifications. It will highlight how Afrikaner identity politics are situated within broader hegemony-seeking processes, both globally and within South Africa. And it will demonstrate that contemporary struggles around Afrikaner identifications are responses to a global neo-liberal hegemonic project that also determines, in large measure, the political and economic agenda pursued by the ANC-led government in South Africa. This paper forms part of a larger project to provide a richer, more critical framework of analysis for understanding identity politics under conditions of increasing globalisation.