Being Black in post-apartheid South Africa

Abstract

As the state of South Africa matures, questions attached to meanings of being ‘Black’ have become more pervasive, and the promised freedom is embroiled in sharpening contradictions and paradoxes. The construction and reconstruction of Blackness developed within capitalism, which is the cornerstone of structural racism. Inferiority complexes emanate from the process of construction, and the overlap between old and new structural contexts reconstructs Black ontology. The article uses grounded experiences of people and the meanings they attach to their realities to stretch ideas of race and class, expanding on Du Bois’ theoretical and empirical scholarship, which pioneered interweaving the relationship between capitalism and how it molds the notion of being Black. I engaged with eight ‘elites’ and forty-six ‘ordinary’ people. ‘Elites’ are those who influenced the intellectual and political landscape, and the term ‘ordinary’ is used, not in an ignominious sense, but as a category of distinction from the ‘elites’. The article argues that being Black in post-apartheid South Africa produces multiple consciousness. Multiple consciousness has multiple folds which interact to disrupt the collective history of oppression. This consciousness does not operate outside capitalism, but it is embedded within its structures.