Nationalism, Homophobia, and the Politics of “New” South African Nationhood

Abstract

Amidst the political shift from apartheid to democracy for over a decade in South Africa, the country has been engaged in political and discursive struggle in attempting to redefine the signifier “South Africa” that acknowledges the atrocities of apartheid violence while simultaneously attempting to rebuild an historically divided society through developing and implementing more democratic structures of governance. Part of this national struggle is not to erase the apartheid era from South African national consciousness and memory, but to rebuild the nation, not only under the traditional tropes of economic development and modernization usually imposed on Africa and other parts of the world by the West, but through juridical practices that take into account the fullest possible range of human rights for all South African citizens, perhaps best symbolized in the early years of the postapartheid period by the establishment and work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.¹