Citizenship and Populism in the New South Africa

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Periodical article

Title:	Citizenship and Populism in the New South Africa
Author:	Halisi, C.R.D.
Year:	1998
Periodical:	Africa Today
Volume:	45
Issue:	3-4
Pages:	423-438
Language:	English
Geographic term:	South Africa
Subjects:	democracy populism nationality Politics and Government Law, Human Rights and Violence Ethnic and Race Relations
External link:	https://www.jstor.org/stable/4187237
Abstract:	In democratic thought, citizenship is a moral conception as well as a legal category. This dual connotation is particularly pertinent to the evolution of democracy in South Africa. Since the demise of apartheid liberationist thought, which provided the main basis of political morality for black South Africans, has encountered a powerful challenge in the form of nonracial, constitutional democracy. Despite the ascendancy of liberal constitutionalism, populist beliefs persist strongly in the arenas of both mass and legislative politics. The cross-pressures of racial autonomy and multiracial assimilation produce in black communities an indigenous 'two-party' dynamic. Racial segregation in South Africa has bifurcated liberal and republican dimensions of citizenship in the black experience. As a result, liberal citizenship assumed the form of struggle for equal rights while republican citizenship sought to build institutional and communal autonomy; both are components of a holistic citizenship consciousness. Notes, ref.