Political Identity and Social Change: The Remaking of the South African Social Order

257 Pages·2002·0.72 MB·English

by  Jamie Frueh

POLITICAL IDENTITY
AND SOCIAL CHANGE
SUNY series in Global Politics
James N. Rosenau, editor
Political Identity
and Social Change
The Remaking of the South African Social Order
JAMIE FRUEH
Foreword by Nicholas Onuf
State University of New York Press
Published by
State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2003 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
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For information, address State University of New York Press,
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Production, Laurie Searl
Marketing, Patrick Durocher
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Frueh, Jamie, 1966–
Political identity and social change : the remaking of the South African social order /
Jamie Frueh.
p. cm. — (SUNY series in global politics)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7914-5547-5 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7914-5548-3 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Social change—South Africa. 2. Group identity—South Africa. 3. South
Africa—Social conditions—1994– 4. South Africa—Politics and government—1994– 5.
Constructivism (Philosophy) I. Title. II. Series.
HN801.A8 F78 2002
303.4'0968—dc21
2002017730
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents,
who taught me to dream big;
to Eileen,
who lets me;
and to Wren and Gavin,
the results.

Contents
Acknowledgments, ix
Foreword by Nicholas Onuf, xiii
Chapter One
INTRODUCTION, 1
Chapter Two
A THEORY OF POLITICAL IDENTITY, 9
Constructivism
Identity
Identity Labels as Units of a Constructivist Method
Conclusion
Chapter Three
SOUTH AFRICA AND IDENTITY, 39
Apartheid and Its Historical Context
Analysis of South African Politics
The Practicalities of Studying South African Identity
Chapter Four
SOWETO 1976, 65
Soweto, June 16, 1976—A Story
Competing Discourses on Soweto
The Political Identity of Soweto
Conclusion: The Beginning of the End
viii CONTENTS
Chapter Five
CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM, 1983–1984, 95
Reform, Resistance, Repression
Competing Discourses on the Constitution
Constitutional Reform and Political Identity
Conclusion
Chapter Six
POST-APARTHEID CRIME, 133
Crime in South Africa
The Discourse on Crime
Crime and Political Identity
Conclusion
Chapter Seven
IDENTITY AND THE TRANSITION:
Conclusions for the Political Theory of Social Change, 169
The Argument for Constructivist Political Identity
The Argument about South Africa
Conclusions and Generalizations
Notes, 185
Bibliography, 215
Index, 231
Acknowledgments
One of the first things a wise man told me was that finishing a project like this
required two things, passion and discipline. As I readily admit (and my family
and friends will certainly attest), this project was finished almost in spite of the
latter requirement. But I have had an abundance of the former: passion about the
identity ideas, passion about the teaching career that this research helped launch,
and the passion that the people of South Africa have shared with me. The tragedy
about writing a book, especially an academic treatise, is that the passion that dri-
ves the original inquiry must get chopped up into words. And for those of us who
are not poets, words too often mask more than they reveal. Analysis demands
breaking something into pieces and sorting those pieces according to a judgment
about their importance for the task at hand. That my passion for understanding
South Africa got channeled into the concepts of identity and change says noth-
ing about the rest of what the place and the people evoke in me. Perhaps this pas-
sion arose from the fact that my first visit to South Africa was also my baptism
into culture shock, but I prefer to think that it was something exogenous to my
personal experiences of the place.
Inthe flurry of activity that accompanied my attempts to meet the deadline
for this book, I took an hour out to mow my lawn. At the time Ihad a push
mower, so listening to the radio while reducing nature to a socially acceptable
height was actually possible. Donald Woods, one of the better known of the mil-
lions of courageous South Africans who took a stand against apartheid, had died
during the week and the commentator on NPR was remembering him. It was a
verypersonal remembrance, with poignant and evocative stories about the White
newspaper editor who came to understand Black Consciousness. At the end, Scott
Simon told the story about how Mr. Woods had been received by the crowds
waiting in line to vote for the first time in April 1994. It was a story, I know, and
one well told by a professional storyteller. But I stood on my front lawn and cried
because of what the South Africans in the story, and all South Africans, did. I
know that the pages of this book do not convey those kinds of feelings, but I
ix